This disc is full of beautiful, fine-drawn, sensitive playing, very much alert to the mercurial moods of Boccherini’s music, and with Chiara Banchini as delicate as can be imagined with his filigree lines – but also full-blooded when the music so demands. Period instruments and restrained use of vibrato give a welcome airiness to the textures. I can’t imagine performances that catch more truly the special nature of Boccherini’s muse.

When one speaks today of the history of the Italian solo concert, one thinks first of Bologna (Torelli, Corelli) and Venice (Albinoni, Vivaldi). It is sometimes overlooked that important impulses for the further development of the genre also emanated from Naples. In addition, cellists in particular owe a lot to the Neapolitans, which this CD aims to clarify. The best known are probably the six concertos by Leonardo Leo (1694-1744) with their light, sometimes gallant tone; of them the A major concerto is represented here along with four individual works by Nicola Fiorenza (died 1764), Nicola Porpora (1686–1768) and Nicola Sabatino (approx. 1705-1796).

Boccherini wrote two versions of his much admired Stabat mater. The original dates from 1781 and is for solo voice; then, 20 years later, he revised it, on a larger scale, using three voices, in order (he said) to avoid the monotony of the single voice and the fatigue to the singer, and also adding a symphony movement to it. This 1801 version was published during his lifetime and in several later editions and seems to have eclipsed the earlier one altogether (which survives only in the autograph manuscript). Yet on hearing this new recording of the original I feel that it conveys the message of the work much more potently than does the more elaborate later version.

Quintets with double bass? The combination is rather rare, but to Boccherini, court composer to the Infante Don Luis and then to Charles II in Madrid, it must have had a special significance, because these three works are unique among his 125 string quintets.

Anyone can set out to perform and record a set of compositions by a given composer. But to truly take the time to bring listeners into the world of both composer and performer, and to engage the listener with as many senses as possible, makes for a truly exceptional recording. Such is the case with this album of Tartini's Sonatas for Solo Violin with violinist Chiara Banchini and soprano Patrizia Bovi. Tartini made a habit of writing excerpts from poetry in the margins of his scores – works that he presumably read before writing to gain inspiration.

This disc of Vivaldi concertos celebrates ten years of the French label Zig-Zag Territoires. The fulsome paean contained in the booklet, sometimes flowery in its prose, sometimes fanciful in its content – ‘Long may our CDs continue to stir this life force within you!’ etc. – may not win new friends, but the playing of Ensemble 415 certainly should. Director and founder of the group, Chiara Banchini has chosen the four Concertos for four violins from Vivaldi’s first and most varied printed sets, L’estro armonico (1711), as well as two further works that, along with the greater number of his concertos remained unpublished during Vivaldi’s lifetime, a Concerto in F major for three violins (RV 551) and in B flat for four (RV 553).

To mark her return to the recording studio after CDs of Tartini and Albinoni (both awarded a Diapason d’Or), Chiara Banchini joins forces with Jörg Andreas Bötticher to present her version of Johann Sebastian Bach’s sonatas for obbligato harpsichord and violin BWV 1014-1019. This interpretation is notable, among other features, for the use of a German harpsichord with the disposition 16', 8', 8', 4', freely reconstructed by Matthias Kramer (Hamburg, 2006) after Christian Zell.

“Here's a very attractively prepared menu whose main course is the Stabatmater for countertenor and strings. Hors-d'oeuvres and side-dishes consist of a ripieno concerto (RV114), a chamber cantata for countertenor and strings (RV684), a string sonata in E flat (RV130) and an introductory motet to a lost Miserere (RV638). Taken together, the pieces demonstrate something of Vivaldi's diverse style as a composer. The chamber cantata, if closely related to the two sacred vocal items on the disc in respect of tonal colour, differs from them in character.

Supremely lovely and deeply beautiful, the performances on this two-disc set devoted to the music of Luigi Boccherini are compelling proof that the Italian-Spanish composer was more than a Rococo bantam weight. Beyond his well-known Minuet, Fandango, and "La Ritirada di Madrid" and his enormous number of cheerful cello concertos and sonatas written for the cello-playing Spanish king, Boccherini was also a composer of quartets, quintets, symphonies, and sacred works that rival those of his contemporary Haydn.

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.

The first six sonatas, or the sonate da chiesa as they are commonly referred to, were published in Geminiani’s arrangements in 1726 and met with immediate success. Not only were the sonorities amplified by the instrumental expansion, but Corelli’s difficult-to-play sonatas were now within reach of violinists with more modest abilities. The skill with which Geminiani embellished Corelli’s music while remaining true to Corelli is immediately evident when Corelli and Geminiani are played back-to-back. It is roughly the aural equivalent of a black and white photo now viewed in color. Geminiani’s arrangements of the second set of six sonatas, the sonate da camera, were soon completed but did not meet with the same immediate popularity.

Immensely popular during his time and maintaining their appeal today, Corelli's 12 Concerti Grossi, Op. 6, are among the gold standard for the form. They are divided into two sections, one being six concerti da camera and the other being six concerti da chiesa. The informatively written liner notes for this Harmonia Mundi album describe the potentially immense orchestra (for the time) that Corelli may have employed for his performances; this recording, however, uses more modest numbers, taking into account the different needs for the "da Camera" and "da Chiesa" concerti. French-based Ensemble 415 (which takes its name from a common Baroque tuning frequency) is led by its founder, violinist Chiara Banchini.

René Jacobs began his career as a countertenor and quickly earned the reputation as one of the finest of his time. But he gradually turned to conducting and since the turn of the new century has rarely sung in concert. As a countertenor Jacobs championed a string of forgotten Baroque composers on his recordings: Antonio Cesti, Sigismondo d'India, Luca Marenzio, Pierre Guédron, Michel Lambert, and others.

These two discs contain Leclair's 12 sonatas for two unaccompanied violins en duo. He produced them in two sets of six, the earlier one, Op. 3, dating from 1730, the later one from 1747-9. Barely a handful have previously been recorded, so these new issues make an important addition to the baroque catalogue. Leclair more than any of his French contemporaries implemented the technical developments in violin playing which were taking place in Italy in the hands of the post-Corelli generation.

The eighteenth century is probably the most extraordinary period of transformation Europe has known since antiquity. Political upheavals kept pace with the innumerable inventions and discoveries of the age; every sector of the arts and of intellectual and material life was turned upside down. Between the end of the reign of Louis XIV and the revolution of 1789, music in its turn underwent a radical mutation that struck at the very heart of a well-established musical language. In this domain too, we are all children of the Age of Enlightenment: our conception of music and the way we ‘consume’ it still follows in many respects the agenda set by the eighteenth century. And it is not entirely by chance that harmonia mundi has chosen to offer you in 2011 a survey of this musical revolution which, without claiming to be exhaustive, will enable you to grasp the principal outlines of musical creation between the twilight of the Baroque and the dawn of Romanticism.