Johannes Pramsohler puts the first version of Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in a cosmopolitan context of travelling virtuosos To make it clear from the start, a “travel concerto” genre does not exist. However, what one can observe time and again are certain characteristics that indicate that many a baroque solo concerto was conceived especially for journeys. The epoch of internationally touring virtuosos indeed first came into full bloom with Paganini and Liszt, and yet even a c

Johannes Pramsohler and Philippe Grisvard place Bach's Six sonatas for violin and obligato harpsichord in a new historical context and offer an intriguing snapshot of how Bach's immediate successors were influenced by his revolutionary sonata model. At the beginning of this project, the idea was actually to create a kind of counterpart to our album “Bach & Entourage” in which we wanted to present sonatas for violin and obbligato harpsichord from Bach’s milieu. However, during

How Ensemble Diderot explored the marvellous sonic landscape of intensity and variety in Leclair's Op. 4 Jean-Marie Leclair's collection of Trio Sonatas Op. 4 represents a milestone of chamber music and a true masterpiece, which contemporaries already recognized. The German music theorist Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg praised Leclair’s fugues in his Abhandlung von der Fuge (Essay on the Fugue) and reproduced two movements from op. 4 as examples alongside fugues by Bach, Kirnberge

Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre and the astonishing rhetorical power in her Trio Sonata in G Minor When Brossard was on his way back to Strasbourg in 1695 from one of his visits to Paris, he travelled with four trio sonatas by Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre in his baggage. “She was so kind as to lend me her originals in order to copy them. They are enchanting, and if anybody needs evidence, he will find four individual parts in the same folder”. The music is now preserved in t