Composed during Antonio Vivaldi's stay in Prague in 1729-30, the Concerto for Lute RV 93 is the most celebrated example of a repertoire almost totally neglected today, but once extremely popular in the German-speaking world, particularly in the Habsburg lands of Austria and Bohemia. After offering us a reference edition of the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach (2022) and a representative anthology of the output of Silvius Leopold Weiss (2024), Evangelina Mascardi concludes her 18th-century trilogy by illuminating a fundamental, yet hitherto largely sidelined, chapter in the history of the lute. Alongside the Vivaldi concerto, which guitarists have embraced since the early 1960s, making it one of his most acclaimed works, we find four genuine and practically unknown gems, such as those composed by Joachim Bernard Hagen and Karl Ignaz Augustin Kohaut, now given their first recording. Accompanied by the Estrovagante Orchestra, directed by Riccardo Doni, Mascardi ventures into the rococo idiom, the stylistic context for the final virtuosic showpieces of an instrument boasting a rich history, but destined-in the space of just a few years-to be definitively eclipsed.

After the success of the complete works for lute by J. S. Bach, crowned by the recognition of international critics (Diapason d'Or, Choc de Classica, Excepcional Scherzo, Record Geijutsu, Eccezionale di Musica, Joker Absolu Crescendo), Evangelina offers a double album dedicated to the music of the greatest lutenist of all time: Sylvius Leopold Weiss. In his work, virtuosity and sumptuousness merge against the elegant and ethereal background of the gallant encounters and court dances of the 18th century. A new recording that restores the lute to it's due and ancient glories.

The seven compositions commonly called works for lute by Johann Sebastian Bach, despite more than a century of studies, do not seem to want to completely reveal the mystery of their birth, of their real instrumental destination and of Bach's decidedly abstract concept of the instrument, the lute, which in its latest evolution continued after almost three centuries of glory to attract the attention of the highest musical lineage. The mystery did not distance the interpreters from these compositions, which Bach did not collect in a single cycle, as he did for the works for solo violin and cello, and indeed it has made them perhaps more stimulating, especially if we consider that in the turn of seventy years the lute was destined to disappear from the music scene. There are moments in which, to discover or define who we are, we must confront ourselves with the unknown. Evangelina Mascardi did it with this extraordinary engraving, which in addition to being the first Bach complete lute works recorded by a women, writes a new important interpretative page, the result of artistic maturity, critical rethinking and original instrumental research.

In the heyday of English Renaissance music, the boundaries of musical forms and instrumental technique were expanded and composers embarked on a search for new, fascinating sounds. Thanks to the outstanding ensemble on this recording - Anna-Lena Elbert, Friederike Heumann (viola da gamba, lyra viol), Evangelina Mascardi (Renaissance lute) and Angelique Mauillon (harp) - this music blossoms again in it's ancient splendor and we can be enchanted by it's beauty, ingenuity and bittersweet melancholy.