Bohuslav Matej Cernohorsky

Laudetur Jesus Christus (selection from the work)

Pavel Cerny - organ, Hipocondria Ensemble, Jan Hadek - Art. Dir. Societas Incognitorum, Eduard Tomastik - Art. Dir. Production: Vitezslav Janda.

Recorded: 3/2004, 6/2005, Church of the Holy Trinity, Smecno, 7/2005, Parish Church of the Czech Brethren, Nymburk. Released: 2005. TT: 49:10. DDD. 1 CD Arta F10139 (distribution 2HP Production).

Bohuslav Matej Cernohorsky (1684 - 1742) is mentioned in nearly every book on the history of Czech music but we need to ask ourselves if we really know him well enough. This new recording with its erudite but readable biographical sketch in the CD booklet and the fresh musical interpretation offers answers. Perhaps the most Baroque of Czech composers, persecuted and pampered by fate, evidently an excellent organ improviser, teacher, a Minorite much more acclaimed abroad than at home, the author of the famous motet Laudetur Jesus Christus, the only one of his works to be printed in his lifetime, and so forth, and so on - even in the few surviving works by Cernohorsky this multiplicity is there to be found and appreciated.

The design of the CD sets the emotionally heightened offertorium Quare Domine irasceris, full of dissonance and Baroque grandeur, and performed with great subjective engagement, at the very centre of the project. …