On this new release, Martina Schobersberger and Gustav Auzinger, both with several album recordings on their own, now combine their love for organs in a great musical dialogue on this release. The practice of performing on two organs developed with the emergence of polychoral performance, evidenced by the existence of two organs constructed facing one another in Italian churches as early as 1745. It is in this spirit of musical conversation that these two musicians present this release. This performance practice is implemented in the present recording not as a duel, but rather as a peaceful musical "Dialogue." Martina Schobersberger studied organ and harpsichord at the Anton Bruckner Private University Linz, as well as at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. She is a member and project manager of the Austrian Baroque Company. Gustav Auzinger studied sacred music and pedagogy of music and organ under the guidance of Michael Radulescu at the Superior School of music in Vienna. He carries out several activities in his field: he is organist of the historical organs of the church of Santa Anna in Steinbruch and in the castle of Neuhaus, and he teaches organ at the Sacred Music Conservatory of Linz.

400 years ago, at the age of twenty-one, Johann Jakob Froberger took up the position of court organist in Vienna and immediately embarked upon his first journey, to study under the great Frescobaldi in Rome. Countless journeys in all directions and to numerous cities follow. Dangers on land and sea provided ongoing material for the composer of programme music, as does the House of Hapsburg, the burial of his colleague the lutenist Blancrocher, or even the confrontation with his own mortality. His bequest is both a treasure trove for all keyboard players and at the same time a mystery: how should this music, to be played freely in Stylus Phantasticus actually sound? Wolfgang Gluxam has won numerous awards for his keyboard playing at international competitions in Bruges and Nijmegen. He teaches harpsichord at Vienna Music University.

Italian composer, gambist, singer, and priest Claudio Monteverdi is regarded as a revolutionary composer, as his compositional style ended the Renaissance and heralded in the ornate virtuosity of the baroque era. While a great deal of his works were sacred, he also wrote a great deal of secular music as well. This album is unique in that the tracks selected are secular works which have been converted into sacred compositions. Il Pegaso has gained critical acclaim for their interpretations of Middle-Ages and Renaissance music. They perform the works on this album on period instruments.

Looking at this program, there's nothing to immediately suggest that it contains anything unusual. Three French cantatas from the first half of the eighteenth century as well as a flute sonata from the same era. Two of the cantatas are inspired by Greek mythology; the third celebrates the sweep to victory by the rose plant in the gardens of the French aristocracy. The continuo group of the Ensemble 392 does not include a string bass, quite in keeping with traditions of Baroque performance practice at that time. And yet there's one aspect, which, from a historical perspective at least, is quite intriguing. Italian cantatas were wildly popular across Europe, so why not French cantatas as well? The reasoning lies within the social structure of France under Louis XIII and Louis XIV. This album is an exploration of those too frequently forgotten works. Taking it's name from French opera pitch a=392 Hertz, the ensemble is mainly interested in French repertoire of the Baroque.

For a long time, Johannes Ockeghem (ca. 1420-1497) was one of the most famous Unknown Persons in music history. There is no doubt about his position as the most important representative of the second generation of Franco-Flemish composers. But what its effect actually was and how its artistic development can be described, there was a long lack of clarity about it, which has only been somewhat cleared up in recent decades thanks to intensive research and discographic exploration. The FRA BERNARDO recording of the Masses with the vocal ensemble Beauty Farm is undoubtedly an impressive way of illustrating the significance of Ockeghem.

For this CD a chronological cross-section of Anton Bruckner's work was chosen for the recorded concert, from the very first composition of an 11 year-old, a Pange lingua, to the late Vexilla Regis. It's often hard to define Bruckner's musical roots and origins, since his first symphony already bears his unmistakable stamp, but some of these seldom performed early sacred works, still prescribing to 18th and early-19th c. Upper Austrian church tradition, can give an idea of his musical background. The chorale melodies, by Bruckner himself, display typical Alpine regional melodic attributes.

A glance at ensemble concert plans, opera and festival programmes and recording catalogues shows that George Frederick Handel's music enjoys enormous and unwavering popularity today. Even during his lifetime, Handel's works could be heard in his homeland as well as in his adoptive country. Following a roaring success as "Caro Sassone" among the Italians his fame spread like wildfire throughout Europe before the composer finally settled among the British in London. This release from Le Petit Concert Baroque presents some of Handel's most famous selections, including several pieces from the opera "Rinaldo," from which this album takes it's title.

We know relatively little about Froberger. His many journeys point to a restless spirit, to boundless curiosity and a desire for personal development. At the age of 18, Johannes Maria Bogner was led to the harpsichord, where he first encountered the works of Froberger and he was captivated by them. After he changed to playing the clavichord, he came back to the composer's works. On this recording he presents them in all the intimacy and agitation that the clavichord is capable of realizing.

Classical Music

The Italian Gambe di Legno has evolved into one of the leading ensembles of it's kind in recent years. Originally founded as a consort of viols, the ensemble has grown to include an ensemble of vocalists, instrumentalists and choir.

In Paraguay, the harp still uses the old techniques that have long been lost in Europe. Lincoln Almada melds these techniques to influences that he has collected from various cultures. And so Un solo camino is a reflection on a type of lost sensitivity how to perform traditional songs.

Carlo Gesualdo’s music is characterized by extravagant harmonies, chromatic modulations, wide intervallic leaps and sometimes hardly catchy melodies, which not only reflect the drama of the text or the mannerism of his time, but also the emotional disorder of his creator. The LuciSerene ensemble and the equally distinguished Mauro Borgioni counter the long-established traditions, characterized by their homogeneity and beauty of sound, with a welcome freshness. In honor of the 450th anniversary of the composer, the ensemble has chosen the music of Carlo Gesualdo.

Mozart's works for piano for four hands were written mostly to use for private playing with his sister Nannerl or gifted students. They focus on the fun and joy of playing, which is expressed, for example, in witty musical jokes. Patrick Ayrton and Wolfgang Gl�xam ensure that the irrepressible joy of making music is also present on this recording. The English harpsichordist, Patrick Ayrton, has always had a passion for keyboard instruments, first the piano, then the organ and the harpsichord. He started his musical studies in Switzerland with Francois Demierre. He then studied the organ and church music with Alfred Mitterhofer at the Academy of Music and Figurative Arts in Vienna where he graduated "cum laude". The Austrian harpsichordist, Wolfgang Gl�xam, studied organ playing with Alfred Mitterhofer at the Hochschule f�r Musik in Vienna, as well as harpsichord with Ton Koopman at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam. 1979 and 1980 he was winner at the international competitions in Brugge/Belgium and Nijmegen/Holland.

After their outstanding recording of Bach's flute sonatas, Linde Brunmayr-Tutz and Lars Ulrik Mortensen are working together again. This time they took the "sensitive style" of the middle 18th century with works by Benda, C.P.E. Bach and Kirnberger, which differ from the lush, polyphonic aesthetics of the predecessor generation. Linde Brunmayer-Tutz studied recorder and transverse flute at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and at Barthold Kuijken at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. She is known for her lively concert activity as a soloist and alongside the world’s leading baroque orchestras. She is joined once again by Danish harpsichordist Lars Ulrik Mortensen, who specializes in Baroque solo and chamber music and Early music repertory. He is currently the artistic director of Concerto Copenhagen.

Friedrich Kuhlau was a central figure of the Danish Golden Age and wrote the first true work of Danish National Romanticism. Kuhlau composed several pieces for flute and a large number of works for piano, which enjoyed great popularity both in Denmark and abroad. Beethoven, whom Kuhlau knew personally, exerted the greatest influence upon his music.