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.

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.

Harmonie & Turcherie: around the year 1800, Western music was experiencing a merging of two phenomena. On one hand was the success of a particular ensemble of wind instruments, boosted by the foundation of the royal and imperial Harmonie by Emperor Joseph himself in Vienna in 1782, the core of its repertoire being arrangements of famous opera arias; on the other, the fashion for orientalism, reflected in different expressions of the arts: painting, sculpture, architecture and music.

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.

This recording is part of the Naïve label's Vivaldi Edition, a complete recording, scheduled to run to 100 discs, of a trove of Vivaldi manuscripts unearthed at the library of the National University of Turin. The recordings have been divided up among various mostly young Italian Baroque interpreters, with a pleasing variety of approaches. The small group Zefiro, under the direction of oboist and soloist Alfredo Bernardini, offers one-instrument-per-part readings and subtle, graceful solos on two different copies of the same 1730 oboe by the London builder Stanesby. Three of the concertos here are reissued from a 1994 recording for the Astrée label, but the approaches of the older and newer recordings are consistent, the biggest difference being the use of a double bass rather than a violin in the continuo group in the later concertos.