An innovative Baroque composer whose reputation was steadily on the rise during the anything-goes years of the waning twentieth century, Jan Dismas Zelenka was born in Lounovice, Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic). He was a court musician in Dresden for most of his career, and both J.S. Bach and Georg Philipp Telemann knew and admired his music. Except for brief periods of travel, during which he refined his craft (he took lessons from Fux and Lotti even after his own technique had been perfected), he served as a double bass player in the court orchestra and later aided the ailing court music director Heinichen in his duties.

New recordings from Supraphon’s Gramophone Editor’s Choice winning series “Music From 18th Century Prague” Unlike the copiously preserved sacred music, instrumental works by Czech composers in the Prague of the first third of the 18th century are as scarce as hen’s teeth. The twenty or so instrumental pieces by Antonín Reichenauer are among the most significant. Reichenauer was a musician in Count Morzin’s chapel, in which he assumed the role of in-house composer after Johann Friedrich Fasch. The ensemble’s superb quality is documented by the Count’s regular contacts with Antonio Vivaldi, whom he engaged as his “maestro di musica in Italia”.