Siesta Ensemble & Ovidio Gimenez Bassoon Delights

Graupner is best known as a composer of cantatas but this CD highlights his compositions in other genres. Ensemble il capriccio plays on replicas of historical instruments and here presents four bassoon concertos, a double concerto for bassoon and chalumeau, as well as Graupner’s only violin concerto in what are mostly world premeiere recordings.

Radio Noisz Ensemble, successor of the folk group Emma Myldenberger, came from the Weinheim an der Bergstrasse area and released its only LP, "Yniverze" in 1982. It was compared to works of the Third Ear Band, Between, and Tri Atma. "Odiszée-Parck", appearing only as a small cassette edition, followed in 1983. The music on this album is of a significantly freer style, more unwieldy and harder to digest than its predecessor; less meditative. Once again the oboe is the leading instrument, and also the remaining instrumentation, featuring English horn, zither, double-bass, violin, flutes, etc. is quite unusual.

Lots of other groups than the ones Bach would have known have decided they wanted a piece of him, from Stokowski's Philadelphia Orchestra to recorder consorts, brass groups, and even teams of electronic musicians. All these settings involve a degree of compromise. A string quartet, for example, brings a grammar of articulation to Bach that may give him a disagreeable accent. This project, originating in Russia, offers something of a middle ground for listeners who may enjoy the sound of Bach played by a contemporary ensemble: it has been carefully done so as to keep the structures of the Goldberg Variations front and center, with no more variety of texture than they would receive on a piano. Arranger Andrei Eshpai, whose career as a composer dates back into the Soviet era, chooses the combination of two oboes, an English horn, and a bassoon for his wind quartet – all double reeds.

This collection of chamber works by French female composers helps to consolidate our understanding of how important these musicians were to French culture during the period 1860-1960. Some of these names will be more familiar to the public than others, Germaine Tailleferre being perhaps the best known, mostly for her membership of Les Six. Others ought to be far more renowned than they are now.

If listeners had to commit to a single version of Vivaldi's Four Seasons for the rest of their lives, this 1984 BIS recording would be thoroughly satisfying choice. Superbly played, brilliantly recorded period instrument performances of this perennial masterpiece are all but a dime a dozen, and the differences between Hogwood's and Pinnock's and Harnoncourt's readings don't begin to make up for the fatal boredom of their performances. This version with Nils-Erik Sparf and the Drottningholm Court Baroque Ensemble would be an ideal choice because theirs is the freshest performance of the piece. Beyond their excellent technique and impeccable sense of style, Sparf and the Swedish musicians bring joy and enthusiasm to the music, and sound like they are in turn receiving happiness and energy from the music. There's real pleasure here, and real affection, as if the concertos were newly composed and these were their world premieres. Filled out with witty accounts of Vivaldi's F major Concerto for Bassoon and his G minor Concerto for Flute and Bassoon, this disc is a delight.

Dorothee Oberlinger brought another musical treasure to light last year at the Potsdam Music Festival. "I Portentosi Effetti della madre Natura by Giuseppe Scarlatti had its premiere in the then brand-new Palace Theatre of the New Palace in Sanssouci - with resounding success. Some 250 years later, the work, which stylistically seems to have been written five minutes before Mozart, with a mix of great seria arias and rousing folk echoes, experienced its celebrated resurrection as a production of the Musikfestspiele Potsdam Sanssouci with the Ensemble 1700 and singers under the artistic direction of Dorothee Oberlinger. The production accompanying the performances will now be released as a world premiere recording on 9 June as a co-production with Musikfestspiele Potsdam and rbb Kultur on the deutsche harmonia mundi label.