This is the 45th title in the Vivaldi Edition, 3 years after the first recording dedicated to Vivaldi scores discovered in Europe between 2000 and 2007, now in its 12th year. This second volume features the most recent discoveries in world premiere recordings and will further contribute to complete one of the most fascinating jigsaw puzzles in musical history Federico Maria Sardelli is a member of the musicological committee of the Istituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi at the Fondazione Cini in Venice, for which he has published numerous scholarly essays. In July 2007 Peter Ryom chose him to continue his monumental work of cataloguing the music of Antonio Vivaldi; since then, Sardelli has been the editor of the Vivaldi Werkverzeichnis (RV).

Le Retour des Dieux sur la Terre and Le Caprice d'Erato are part of the tradition inherited from Louis XIV of occasional pieces that served to illustrate major events at Court: Composed four years apart, the first to celebrate the wedding of Louis XV and Marie Leszczynska in 1725 and the second for the birth of their first son in 1729, these two divertissements are veritable little concert operas in which splendid grand narratives, triumphal overtures, surprising dances, solemn choruses and grandiose finales follow one another.

Most of Haydn's concertos are early works, written in the years immediately before or after his engagement at the Esterhazy court in 1761. During that time, he composed four violin concertos, of which three-all except Hob.VIIa, No.2 in D major - survive, none of them in autograph form. Hob.VIIa No.3, in A major turned up only in 1949.

Musettes, hurdy-gurdies, and flutes formed the dream countryside of Rococo-style salons, that of Watteau’s painting Concert Champêtre (1727), when Naudot’s Fantaisies were enjoying their hour of glory. The fashion for “pastoralism” was in full swing, and professional musicians as well as great amateurs vied with each other in “pastoral” concertos where musettes and hurdy-gurdies featured heavily. These instruments were popular originally, garnering great skill to rise to the heights of virtuoso: enough to enchant Louis XV’s courtesans and those close to La Pompadour! Alexis Kossenko reveals these wonderfully outdated gems to us as a bold shepherd.

Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) left two very different versions of his tragédie en musique Zoroastre: the first, in 1749, suffered from cabals and the work was withdrawn from the repertory. Rameau gave it a thoroughgoing revision in 1756. At this time, he was at the height of his powers. Melody, harmony, orchestration and choral writing no longer held any secrets for him. Zoroastre brought still further innovation. For the first time, he dispensed with a prologue, and turned the overture into a philosophical ‘programme’, the struggle between day and night, between good and evil. The 1749 version is entirely governed by avant-garde ideas; Zoroastre resembles Tamino in Die Zauberflöte, but two generations earlier. This disconcerted some of the audience: Zoroastre was a moral, social and philosophical opera.

It is difficult to think of Mendelssohn without being reminded of the extraordinary evocative power of his music, capable of conjuring up bright Italian sunshine, grey Scottish landscapes, and the magical world of fairies. He was a child prodigy and an outstanding composer, but he tends nevertheless to be neglected, compared to other members of his generation in the nineteenth century – to the detriment of his art, which is fascinating in so many ways.

Les Ambassadeurs launch a series of recordings devoted to the repertory of the Dresdner Hofkapelle at the time of Bach, with the aim of rediscovering the splendid sound of an ensemble then regarded as the orchestral ideal. The ties of friendship between Johann Georg Pisendel – who led the orchestra – and Antonio Vivaldi held firm for life. Between their first meeting in Venice in 1716 and the death of the Prete Rosso in 1741, Pisendel continually enriched his collection of Vivaldi concertos, a certain number of which were manifestly tailor-made for his outstanding technique and equally exceptional delicacy of expression. This explains why Dresden holds so many Vivaldian treasures, sometimes autograph, sometimes copied in Pisendel’s own hand.

If Mozart gave the concerto of his time its ultimate shape, it is because he transferred to it all the characteristics of the opera aria, giving the cantabile – which he often mentions in his correspondence – most significant importance and transforming the vocal virtuosic runs instrumental figurations. The soloist is a character whose rhetoric gives the orchestral material presented in the introduction a deeper, more intimate and more sensitive dimension. This constitutes the raison d’être of the relationship between the individual and the group, between the solos and the tuttis.

We know very little about Joseph Touchemoulin, a renowned violinist and chapel master to the princely courts of Bonn and Regensburg for more than 50 years–and one of the few 18th century French composers to have enjoyed a career outside France. Touchemoulin's apprenticeship was largely accomplished at Padua, where he became a pupil of the great violinist and composer Giuseppe Tartini. This is the source of the exuberant Italian idiom which characterizes his work, and which he would later combine with the delicacy and ease of the German tradition. This first recording of Touchemoulin on period instruments, or on authentic copies, presents three of the composer's concertos and two of his symphonies–charming, finely made music that combines Italian influences with the current tastes of the Mannheim school.

An opera of adventurous and lavish scope, Rameau’s magical Achante et Céphise receives its world premiere recording – 270 years after its staged premiere at the Académie royale de musique in celebration of the birth of Louis XV’s grandson. The first French opera to feature clarinets, it offers a rich sequence of choruses, ballets and virtuoso ariettes and opens with a celebratory overture which includes a graphic musical depiction of a fireworks display. Alexis Kossenko conducts tenor Cyrille Dubois and soprano Sabine Devieilhe in the title roles, Les Ambassadeurs – the orchestra he founded in 2010 – and the choral singers of Les Chantres du CMBV (Centre de musique baroque de Versailles).

Alexis Kossenko delves into the repertoire of one of the most admired orchestras in Europe during Bach's lifetime. The greatest composers of the century composed for this famous ensemble, who were showcase for the musical splendor of the court of the prince-electors. Combining concerti and sacred music, this album is the first volume in an exceptional series devoted to this orchestra.

Here Alexis Kossenko (flute) and Vassilis Varvaresos (piano) plunge us into the fantastic atmosphere of Northern Europe in the second half of the Nineteenth Century, when composers’ imaginations were fired by folktale and legend. The water spirit Ondine inspired Carl Reinecke, whose op. 167 provides the starting point for an allegorical programme inhabited by disturbing and fascinating creatures.