ANDERS CHYDENIUS was collecting music at a time when public concerts and interest in classical music were just taking their first steps in Finland. His collection occupies an important position in Finnish musical history. Similar, much bigger private collections had long before been made in Central Europe and Sweden, but the musical vision in the spirit of the Enlightenment of the vicar of a small, remote parish was quite exceptional. This new release is an homage to his work and features the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra performing compositions that held a place in Chydenius’s collection- works by Gaetano Pugnani, Christian Ernst Graf, Giuseppe Maria Giacchino Cambini, Antonio Sacchini, and Lebrecht Julius Schulz.

Espousing the cause of the Institute for the Musical Heritage of Piedmont, over a ten-year period Opus 111 are issuing 50 discs of “Treasures of Piedmont”, mostly first recordings. The Academia Montis Regalis under Luigi Mangiocavallo has already opened our eyes and ears to orchestral music by Pugnani (10/96), perhaps the greatest violinist of his time. Now the same forces offer something well off the beaten track and only recently brought to light – a “musical translation” of Goethe’s novel Werther, which had been published a couple of decades previously. (The Baker-Slonimsky Dictionary, exceptionally, is totally wrong about this work.)