Few people nowadays seriously believe Vivaldi wrote the same concerto five hundred times. But the view that there is little variety in Vivaldi's oeuvre is still widely held. Louis T. Vatoison, in the programme notes to this recording, has a strongly different perception: "a Vivaldi concerto must (…) be seen as an individual 'snapshot', whose instrumental layout or formal structure implicitly reveal at what period, and sometimes even for whom it was written". The music on this disc gives ample evidence for this view.

Despite the use of period instruments, including some fine blaring natural horns, this couldn't be called a historically informed performance of Handel's Royal Fireworks Music, HWV 351. The work was not composed for a pleasant onboard afternoon musicale like the Water Music, but instead was part of an event that would have been one of the top items on CNN Headline News for 1749: the celebration of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, brokered by King George II.

Zefiro has already proved its strong affinity with Georg Philipp Telemann's music, and the ensemble's recording of his Ouvertures a 8 was awarded a Gramophone Editor's Choice. As Julie Anne Sadie pointed out, ''the much-vaunted lean muscularity of the Ensemble Zefiro performances favors the wind instruments and, when joined with one-to-a-part strings, produces a freshly balanced sonority that alters our experience of these works''. The 250th anniversary of Telemann's death offers now a neat incentive to release this successful recording on which his Wassermusik, generally referred to as Hamburg Ebb and Flow, is coupled with Handel's more familiar aquatic suites.

Following its highly acclaimed album featuring the three most richly scored Ouvertures (Gramophone Editor’s Choice – shortlisted for the 2017 Gramophone Awards and included among the Top 10 recent Bach recordings), Zefiro comes full circle with the famous collection of Concerts avec plusieurs instruments, that kaleidoscope of colours that seems almost tailor-made to highlight the salient qualities of the ensemble founded by the three historical wind specialists, Alfredo Bernardini and Paolo and Alberto Grazzi.

These two CDs were originally recorded and released by naïve in the mid 1990s; recorded out of numerical order, sonatas 5, 6 and 2 are on the first disk, while 1, 3 (in which a violin replaces one of the oboes) and 4 are on the other. Both sets involve a theorbo and deep string bass (contrabbasso on CD1 and violone on CD2), all played by different players. The wind soloists are constant (and what a stellar line-up – Paolo Grazzi and Alfredo Bernardini on oboe and Alberto Grazzi on bassoon); Manfredo Kraemer is the violinist.

Michael Haydn, younger brother of the great Josef, and Georg Druschetsky, Kapellmeister and oboist in the grenadiers, were especially famous exponents of the wind band medium. Celebrating the mariage of wind and voice, these mass-settings are accompanied only by woodwind, brass and organ - a combination of timbres, Leopold Mozart maintained, 'close to the human voice' where 'eveything flows'…

Fireworks, virtuosity and bravura pieces are essential ingredients of Vivaldi’s concerto oeuvre. Discover or rediscover Vivaldi’s concertos played by the most prestigious artists.

In 2018, the Styriarte Festival in Graz launched, in collaboration with Zefiro, a project to rediscover the operatic output of the Styrian composer Johann Joseph Fux (1660-1741), Kapellmeister at the imperial court in Vienna for forty years, with the aim of restaging six of his nineteen operas, one per year. With a cast of Baroque vocal specialists, led by Monica Piccinini and Carlotta Colombo, this set of La corona d’Arianna represents the second instalment of the Arcana series which documents the recordings made in the course of this six-year cycle, following the success of Dafne in lauro (A488, 2021 – awarded Gramophone Editor’s Choice and rated Eccezionale by Musica).

During the summer of 1989, oboists Alfredo Bernardini and Paolo Grazzi together with bassoonist Alberto Grazzi founded Zefiro, a versatile ensemble specialized in 18th century music predominantly featuring wind instruments. Zefiro soon made a name for itself worldwide, and to celebrate its thirty years of activity Arcana is releasing an elegant 10-CD set of their complete recordings of baroque music. From the ensemble’s first disc (Sonatas by Zelenka - Grand Prix du Disque), the compilation alternates recordings of repertoire composers and pieces that have become absolute points of reference, such as the Vivaldi Bassoon Concertos, Handel’s Fireworks (Diapason d’or de l’année 2009) or the Bach Overtures (judged by Gramaphone to be one of the 50 best Bach recordings of all time).

Like many education-hungry sons of the European nobility, the 18-year-old Prince Frederick August II embarked on his Grand Tour, which took him from Saxony to Venice in 1716, where he spent almost a year. The large entourage that accompanied the young prince on this trip included such great musicians as the violinist Johann Georg Pisendel, the oboist Johann Christian Richter and the composer Jan Dismas Zelenka. In Venice, an intense exchange with local stars such as Vivaldi developed, in an atmosphere of friendship and competition. On his return to Dresden, August took with him, in addition to Lotti and Veracini, Heinichen, whom he had met in Venice and who became his Kapellmeister. After acclaimed recordings of orchestral works by Handel and Bach, Zefiro now discovers this fascinating repertoire of music by Italians who composed in the French style and Germans who wrote Venetian concertos to impress the prince.

In 2018, the Styriarte Festival in Graz launched, in collaboration with Zefiro, a project to rediscover the operatic output of the Styrian composer Johann Joseph Fux (1660-1741), Kapellmeister at the imperial court in Vienna for forty years, with the aim of restaging six of his nineteen operas, one per year. With a cast of Baroque vocal specialists, led by Monica Piccinini and Arianna Venditelli, this set of Dafne in lauro marks the beginning of a new series in which Arcana will release the recordings made in the course of the six-year cycle.

In 2018, the Styriarte Festival in Graz launched, in collaboration with Zefiro, a project to rediscover the operatic output of the Styrian composer Johann Joseph Fux (1660-1741), Kapellmeister at the imperial court in Vienna for forty years, with the aim of restaging six of his nineteen operas, one per year. With a cast of Baroque vocal specialists, led by Monica Piccinini and Arianna Venditelli, this set of Dafne in lauro marks the beginning of a new series in which Arcana will release the recordings made in the course of the six-year cycle. First performed on 1 October 1714 to celebrate the birthday of the Emperor Charles VI, Dafne in lauro is distinguished by the numerous references to hunting in the overture and in Diana’s arias, and by the numerous dance movements typical of the French style, such as minuets, gigues and bourrées. The highlight is Daphne’s poignant aria accompanied by the viola da gamba, which, along with the chalumeau and the transverse flute, enriches the range of tone colours in the score.

Vivaldi is a composer who frequently relies on formulae and simple structures as the foundation of his compositional technique. You have to use a little imagination and a bit of bravado to make his music work. Therefore–and fortunately–that's exactly what period instrument ensemble Zefiro does. It takes these concertos by the scruff of their necks and wrings out pleading phrases, brilliantly coloured sounds, moments of high drama and a whole load of fun from them. This is period instrument playing at its best–unapologetic, unafraid, ballsy even–and the soloists sound as if they are having a whale of a time.

The legendary label, deutsche harmonia mundi, releases a special 50 CD boxset featuring star performers such as Hille Perl, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Dorothee Oberlinger, Simone Kermes, and Nuria Rial and more! This collection displays the sheer variety available from the dhm archive. A perfect collection ranging Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque and Romantic music.

This disc presents three vocal pieces for soprano with oboe and basso continuo, interspersed between four trio sonatas for 2 oboes & basso continuo.The first cantata "Mi palpita il cor" was written in England - there are four existing variants, but this presented here is probably the earliest, the date given here as 1717. The theme is typically pastoral, with the singer's amorous affliction, the sorrow and hope of being in love with Chloris. The second vocal piece "Meine Seele hort im Sehen" is one of Handel's nine German da capo arias written around 1724/25 which were never published; they were songs of spiritual devotion rejoicing in God's creation as manifested in the beauty of nature, and not intended for concert performance.