For the 15th anniversary of Ensemble Diderot, and after forays into concertos and chamber music using larger forces, Johannes Pramsohler and his colleagues go back to the roots with a recording of their core repertoire: trio sonatas. Highly inventive works by Bach pupils Johann Gottlieb Goldberg and Wilhelm Friedemann Bach make for a programme in which the Diderots show their art with their trademark stylish and agile playing.

The music recorded here encompasses a period of around a hundred years. The earliest works come from the time around 1600, which is considered one of the most profound watersheds in musical history. The new expressiveness unleashed above all by Monteverdi’s music was at the same time also potent in the increasingly independent instrumental music. This development is directly connected with the emancipation of the violin and its marvelous cantabile and virtuoso possibilities. When the composers started to make the individual sections of the ricercar into independent contrasting movements, and accordingly separated them from each other also in terms of tempo, the transition to a cyclical manner of formation, that is to say, to a stringing together of independent movements, was initiated and a meaningful musical organization adopted as a maxim.

After Ensemble Diderot established itself as an internationally renowned ambassador for the masterful late repertoire of the ‘sonata a tre’, having given new polish to well-known major works of the literature as well as adding unknown treasures to the canon, it takes up in this programme the repertoire of the ‘sonata a quattro’. Owing to its appearance shortly before the emergence of the string quartet, the ‘sonata a quattro’ was largely disregarded, yet occupied an important intermediary role between the baroque and the early classical era.

Bach’s Musical Offering, one of the most fascinating works in music history, still raises questions even after countless interpretations and performances. Composed three years before his death, it embodies everything that makes Bach so captivating: magnificent music that is consummate in all parameters, hidden messages, romantic-transfigured history, enigmatic masterpieces, numerology… and most often it is met by nebulous, apprehensive respect.

This album marks the solo debut of Ensemble Diderot cellist Gulrim Choi and contains several World Premiere Recordings. Faithful to the values of the ensemble, she looks at a facet of a repertoire that has been neglected over time.

France's contribution to the genre of the Baroque solo concerto seems late and tentative, but it is fascinating to see how French composers celebrated the arrival of the violin and combined Italian robustness and French elegance in their works. Johannes Pramsohler and Ensemble Diderot take a journey to the origins of this hybrid form, presenting here the very first violin concertos by French composers, with two world-premiere recordings of concertos by Jean-Marie Leclair and Andre-Joseph Exaudet at the heart of this virtuosic and exciting programme.

The Violin sonata in D major (HWV 371) was composed (c. 1749-50) by George Frideric Handel, for violin and keyboard (harpsichord). Other catalogues of Handel's music have referred to the work as HG xxvii,47; and HHA iv/4,28. This sonata represents Handel's last piece of chamber music. The piece was not published by Walsh. The designation Opus 1 No.13 was first made in the Chrysander edition. A typical performance of the work takes about twelve minutes.

Johannes’ debut CD focuses on the music of one of the most celebrated orchestras at Bach’s time: the Dresden court orchestra. No other orchestra was as cosmopolitan in terms of its makeup, as familiar with all the current styles, or as skilled in dealing with difficult scores as the group led by Johann Georg Pisendel. He was also responsible for making the Dresden music archive into one of the most extensive in Europe. Fortunately the so-called Schrank II collection – preserved today in the Saxon State Library – with its inexhaustible trove of acoustical treasures survived the turmoil of a number of devastating wars.