Brigitte - Klassik zum Genießen: Die neue Serie mit einfach schöner Musik, ausgewählt von der Musikredaktion der Brigitte und Sony Classical.
Dorothee Oberlinger hat längst bewiesen, welch abwechslungsreiches und virtuoses Instrument die Blockflöte ist. Für ihre herausragende Musikalität wurde sie 2008 mit dem Echo Klassik als Instrumentalistin des Jahres ausgezeichnet. Sowohl Fachpresse als auch Musikliebhaber überschlagen sich mit Lob. »Barocke Freuden! Welch' Klangwelle rollt auf uns zu, wenn man die Flötentöne von Dorothee Oberlinger hört«, schreibt Spiegel Online.

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.

Dresden was a music capital of European rank during the 17th-18th centuries. It was in Dresden that important composers and musicians of the time lived and worked. The Dresden Baroque Orchestra is committed to offering energetic, historically-informed interpretations on baroque instruments and to the rediscovery of forgotten works from the collection of the Dresden court chapel. This collection contains numerous works by composers famous and not, some 1800 manuscripts in all.

Leave it to Fabio Biondi to take a relatively "new" work of Antonio Vivaldi never before recorded and build something exciting and thoroughly relevant around it. Virgin Classics' Improvisata: Sinfonie con titoli features Vivaldi's plucky Sinfonia Improvisata, RV 802, a fragmentary work that was discovered only in 1999; this appears to be its first recording. As it lasts only three-and-a-half minutes, one could fill it out with other Vivaldi sinfonias and therefore duplicate dozens of other recordings. Instead, Biondi has taken account of the turbulent and highly pictorial character of the short Vivaldi work and has located a selection of similar pieces that complement it well. Most extraordinary among them is the sinfonia La tempesta di mare by mega-obscure Italian Carlo Monza and a cheerful, vibrant symphony by Giuseppe Demachi, La campane di Roma – decorative, highly programmatic pieces from the eighteenth century that have never seen the light of day.

For his new album 'Soave e virtuoso', Alexis Kossenko went on the trail of rare scores from the baroque era, reminding us that Italian repertory might give pride of place to the the violin and voice, but doesn’t forget wind instruments. At the head of his ensemble Les Ambassadeurs, the conductor and flautist Alexis Kossenko performs concertos by Tartini, Vivaldi and Sammartini: often voluptuous, sometimes dreadfully acrobatic, these scores require technique and sensitivity from the soloist. With a jubilant virtuosity, at the service of expressiveness, Alexis Kossenko, multi-skilled musician as at ease with flute as with recorder, brings new life to the works of the three Italian masters.