Known for her spirited and luminous sound, Baroque flute player Alexa Raine-Wright shares her eloquent interpretations with audiences across North America in solo, chamber and orchestral performances. This debut solo recording brings to light a collection of rarely heard works by Giovanni Benedetto Platti (1697–1763), a composer with one foot planted firmly in the Baroque, and the other foot pointed toward the Classical style. Equally at ease on the Baroque flute and recorder, American/Canadian Alexa Raine-Wright has shared her passion and talent for early music with audiences across the United States and Canada in solo, chamber and orchestral performances. Winner of several national and international competitions, Alexa was awarded the $10,000 Devonna & Amos Gerber Grand Prize as well as the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra Prize at the 2016 Indianapolis International Baroque Competition. ?Alexa is a founding member of the ensemble Infusion Baroque, winner of the Grand Prize and Audience Prize in the 2014 Early Music America Baroque Performance Competition in Chicago. She is also a member of the celebrated recorder quartet Flûte Alors!, Canada’s only recorder quartet.
Since it's founding in Freiburg in 1958, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi has been one of the most important and ambitious labels for period performances. Over decades, globally-acclaimed recordings were created with outstanding musicians. The limited edition "Deutsche Harmonia Mundi: 100 Great Recordings" contains 100 outstanding DHM recordings with some of the most important and best artists in their field: Nuria Rial, Dorothee Mields, Al Ayre Espanol, Hille Perl, Concentus Musicus Wien, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, the Freiburger Barockorchester, Skip Sempé, Capriccio Stravagante, La Petite Bande, Gustav Leonhardt, Andrew Lawrence-King, Frieder Bernius, the Balthasar-Neumann-Chor, Thomas Hengelbrock and many others.
With its Progetto Vivaldi releases from Argentine cellist Sol Gabetta, Sony Classical seems to be trying to take back the spotlight from France's Naïve label and its gutsy, even tumultuous Vivaldi recordings. The attempt has no right to work as well as it does. Gabetta did not emerge from the early music world, only recently having taken up the gut-strung "Baroque" cello (she plays a 1781 instrument by the Neapolitan maker Gagliano), and even more recently learned the art of leading her own Cappella Gabetta ensemble. But this is a young musician who merits the collection of accolades that have come her way, and these are very strong performances.