Of remoter Scottish and nearer French ancestry, the German composer and organist Georg Muffat was employed in Vienna, Prague, Salzburg and finally Passau. A visit to Rome brought acquaintance with Corelli and his music, an influence on Muffat’s own orchestral suites and sonatas.

The 17th-century Austrian composer Heinrich Biber is remembered today for his extraordinary solo violin music–collections such as the Mystery Sonatas. He wrote a number of large-scale instrumental works and choral pieces as well, but their reputation is not as high. They include a lot of grand gestures for brass, but they tend to be harmonically static and often seem long-winded. So Konrad Junghänel and his superb musicians have really achieved something by making the works on this disc sound so appealing.

Discorsi Musicali’ reflects the music of the Munich Court under Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria, presenting works of Johann Kaspar Kerll, Agostino Steffani und Rupert Ignaz Mayr. Together with Ida Aldrian, mezzo-soprano from the Styrian city of Bruck an der Mur, Ensemble Castor introduces these lately rediscovered baroque masterpieces, which originate from the South-German and Austrian region – full of suspense and with high intensity.

In a kind of High Baroque version of the duelling guitars from the film ‘Deliverance’, Alba have contrived to set Heinrich Biber and Georg Muffat against each other as rivals in a virtual virtuoso set-piece. The evidence for this is perhaps a little thin, but what is true is that both of these almost exact contemporaries worked for a while at the same time in the Court of the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. This period in the 1670s and 1680s gives rise to the not unreasonable speculation that there was a “rivalry that in all probability existed between them for the favour of their influential employer”, presumably with the ambition of ending up as Hofkapellmeister.

Muffat was in more ways than one the product of many cultures. Born in Savoy to a family of Scottish descent, he was trained by Lully in Paris, was taken under the wing of Pasquini and Corelli in Rome, and yet always considered himself a German. The style of his music is equally eclectic, combining the dance-like nature of seventeenth-century French music with the gusto and fantasy of Italian music and the sombreness of the music of the North. The result is astounding. In this vigorous performance, Ensemble 415, one of the best of today's period-instrument groups, tries to recreate the sound of the seventeenth-century Roman chamber orchestra.

What the largely unknown name of Georg Muffat may lack in dissemination and reputation, he makes up for in incredible variety, virtuosic power, and influence, especially on the development of instrumental music. The treasure trove of Muffat, which comes to light in particular in his sonata collection Armonico tributo, is what the early music ensemble Concerto Copenhagen and its director Lars Ulrik Mortensen are taking to the discographic spearhead of their 30th anniversary in 2022.

In the Europe of the first half of the seventeenth century, instrumental music became a source of sonic and expressive experimentation. Influenced by vocal rhetoric, composers sought to replace words with a new musical language. The virtuosity of the instrumentalists developed, as did invention, improvisation and the search for surprising sonorities. Along with the organ or the harpsichord, the violin was the instrument of choice for experimenting with these new techniques. Italian and German composers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as Farina, Schmelzer, Mealli, Buxtehude, Biber, Pisendel and Bach vied with each other in imaginativeness… The violinist Chouchane Siranossian and the harpsichordist Leonardo García Alarcón – both loyal Alpha Classics artists – have chosen to explore this repertory, here including Bach’s sonatas BWV 1019, 1021 and 1023 among other pieces.

This commemoration of the 300th anniversary of the death of Biber is subtitled ‘In the midst of life we are in death’ and divided into ‘Vita’ and ‘Mors’. The ‘Life’ section consists of the Mass interspersed with all but two of the pieces by other composers listed above; ‘Death’ wraps the Praeludium and Lassus’s Media vita… round the Requiem.

The 17th-century Bohemian/Austrian composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber is best known for his works for solo violin, especially the Mystery Sonatas. However, he also wrote a considerable amount of music for string ensemble, including a set of 12 chamber sonatas subtitled Fidicinium Sacro-Profanum which was first published in Nuremberg in 1683. The title refers to the fact that the music in the sonatas combine sacred and secular styles. In his collection, Biber set new standards in the field of string chamber music. In the first part he composes for a five-part string ensemble: 2 violins, 2 violas, violone and basso continuo, a combination that was established at his time as the standard ensemble in Austrian cultural circles.

The Habsburg Imperial Court was a melting pot of many different cultures in which the zest for living of southerners, the Slav melancholy, French formalism, Spanish courtliness and the original German-speaking Alpine cultural region intermingled. Together with his Ars Antiqua Austria ensemble, Gunar Letzbor occupied himself over a ten year period to produce this 10CD "Klang der Kulturen" box, a musical tour of the individual countries that formed the roots of and influences on the music of baroque Vienna, documenting them in live recordings, with each CD representing one country.

Georg Muffat’s “Missa in labore requies” alongside church sonatas of his contemporaries make up audite’s latest offering in the series of polychoral baroque music recorded by renowned Early Music performers.
With its octagonal layout and four galleries, the Abbey Church at Muri provides an ideal acoustic for performing polychoral music. The galleries surround the main body of the church, placing the audience in the midst of the musical event. This sound experience is unique, both in concert and in recordings. The considerable distance between the galleries creates challenges in the musical interaction of the different groups.

Das Orchester "La Petite Bande" wurde 1972 von Sigiswald Kuijken gegründet. Ursprünglich war der Anlass der Gründung lediglich eine Tonaufnahme von Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme von Lully. Der Erfolg dieser und der der nachfolgenden Aufnahmen war jedoch so überwältigend, dass "La Petite Bande" sich als ständiges Orchester etablierte und seitdem regelmäßig Konzerte gegeben hat. Diese Box beinhaltet eine Auswahl von hervorragenden 10 CDs aus der umfangreichen Diskographie dieses Orchesters.