The Doppler brothers played a dominant role in the K & K Monarchy’s musical life as composers, conductors, musicians, and as orchestral soloists. They were on good terms with acknowledged artists of the era, such as Ferenc Liszt, Ferenc Erkel, of Jozsef Bajza. Capriccio starts with this first album in the release of ten total of the complete flute music composed by Franz and Carl Doppler, including many world premiere recordings and interesting autobiographical notes. Flutist Claudi Arimany has done all of the research for this project over the past two decades, and has invited some of the best musicians in the world to participate in this project, including Janos Balint and Shigenori Kudo, who are the flutists chosen for this album.

Graceful, refined, and irresistibly charming, the Flute Quartets occupy an exquisite place in Mozart’s incomparable chamber music. This light, airy music with its vivid contrasts, delicious textures and irrepressible wit is brought to life by the soloists of the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin in this new release from PENTATONE. Mozart may have disparaged the flute as an instrument but he shows no signs of weariness in these exemplary works which positively overflow with youthful optimism. The young unemployed Mozart wrote three of the flute quartets following a commission from the Dutch amateur flautist Ferdinand Dejean in Mannheim. Around the same time he also started work on his famous Concerto for Flute and Harp. The Flute Quartet in D K285 is a breezy affair written in concertante style which brims with attractive melodies. Its sublimely affecting slow movement was described by the biographer Alfred Einstein as “perhaps the most beautiful accompanied flute solo that has even been written”. The simple, unhurried Flute Quartet in G K285A contains a delightful interplay of instruments, while the Flute Quartet in C K285B has a charming theme and variations with a spirited finale. The playful Flute Quartet in A K298 is a later work perhaps written for a group of friends; it contains borrowings from other composers artfully woven into the engaging and witty score. The result is, of course, utterly winning. Ulf-Dieter Schaaff is the principal flautist with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, a position he combines with a career as a soloist and as an internationally sought-after teacher. He is joined by his colleagues Philipp Beckert (violin), Andreas Willwohl (viola) and Georg Boge (violoncello). In their first recording for PENTATONE, they chose an unconventional seating arrangement (with violin and flute on the outer flanks) in order to create a novel spatial effect in the music. They play these quartets not as a “Concerto for Flute and String Trio” but as chamber music written for equal partners.

Within this new album the Armonia delle Sfere ensemble is delivering to us the complete Produzioni Armoniche work by Antonia Bembo, a collection of 41 motets dedicated in 1701 to Louis XIV, in whose court she landed after a series of vicissitudes occurred in Venice, her hometown, including the failure of a marriage and important family disputes, for which she was deprived of her paternal inheritance. After being trained under the musical guidance of Francesco Cavalli (1602-1676), organist of the ducal chapel of San Marco, Antonia secretly married Lorenzo Bembo, a Venetian nobleman, from whom she had two children, and from whom in 1672 she herself asked divorce, due to the continuing absence of her husband, whom she also accused of continuing abuse and betrayal. She then moved to Paris, perhaps following the guitarist Francesco Corbetta, where she concentrated on music and composition, and where she had the opportunity to perform in the presence of Louis xiv, at the court of which she would find acceptance and protection until the end of her life. It is the fascinating story of a strong personality that sought and found its way overcoming the difficult condition of a seventeenth century woman artist.

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were important for the development of the transverse flute: the technical improvements introduced by French and German flutists made the instrument become more accurate in its tuning, more powerful in its sound, and more agile in quick passages, so much so that it superseded the recorder and began to compete with the violin, even replacing it in some sonatas or concertos. Virtuoso flutists such as Philibert Rebillè, Michel de la Borre, Pierre Gabriel Buffordin, Michel Blavet, Johann Joachim Quantz and his noble pupil Frederick II of Prussia were undoubtedly a source of inspiration for the composers of the baroque and galant periods who composed music for the transverse flute and produced pieces that became landmarks in the history of music; but it was also thanks to the diffusion of the instrument among amateurs that the transverse flute repertoire was enriched by an extraordinary number of compositions, many of which were exquisite works. This is the case of these five unpublished concertos by Italian authors - some of them totally unknown, now rediscovered by the Baroque Ensemble “Carlo Antonio Marino”, led by Natale Arnoldi, and by the flute of Raffaele Trevisani.