Bach Hunteler

Both C.P.E. Bach and Franz Benda were composers who enjoyed the favour of the court of Frederick the Great and who developed a highly individual and lasting style of music in the monarch's service. Though ‘Old Fritz’ demanded works in the pleasing galant style for his almost daily music sessions from his court musicians, Franz Benda succeeded in humouring the king without stooping to compromise quality. His three concertos for flute seem to have been tailor-made for Frederick II; in the galant style, yet full of sensitivity and profound emotion.

The Camerata of the 18th Century and its director Konrad Hünteler are committed to the recovery of original sound from the forgotten and not-soforgotten musical past. This long-awaited re-release features a masterpiece and one certainly well worth all the painstaking research that went into it: Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos.

Marking the 300th anniversary of Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach’s birth in 1714, this 13-CD box at budget price presents a survey of his greatest works, performed by some of the most renowned musicians in the world of historically informed performance. Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach (1714-1788), the second son of JS Bach, was a celebrated figure in his lifetime and is recognised as a crucial figure in the transition from the Baroque to the Classical styles. Mozart, no less, said of him: "He is the father, we are the children.”

A transformative force in historically informed performance, Ton Koopman is renowned as a conductor, harpsichordist and organist. In 1979, aged 35, he founded the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra in the city where he had studied with the great Dutch harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt. Drawing on an international pool of players, the ensemble soon gained a reputation for flexibility, colour and expressivity as it explored the music of such composers as the Bach family, Handel, Telemann and Buxtehude.

Franciscus (30 October 1934 – 13 August 2014) was a Dutch conductor, recorder player and baroque flautist.