A first on record: two sets of sonatas by an English contemporary of Handel and Johann Christian Bach, painting a lively portrait of chamber music in London during the middle of the 18th century.

This album is devoted to Handel's concertante music for solo oboe, of which only a few concertos have survived. He was particularly fond of the instrument and assigned many solos to it in his oratorios, operas, concerti grossi and sonatas. He is even reported to have said of his early oboe works: 'I used to write like the D-v[Devil] in those days, but chiefly for the oboe, which was my favourite instrument.'His some 20 concertos for a solo instrument are mainly for the organ and include just one violin concerto and three oboe concertos (HWV 301, 302a and 287). The latter, featured here, is the best known, as it also appears transcribed for other instruments.

The first-ever survey on record of the complete surviving output by a significant contemporary of Rameau: a missing piece in the jigsaw of the French Baroque.

"Ottavio Bariolla represented absolute musical perfection. The organs of the [church of] Madonna di San Celso are honoured to have passed through the hands of such an excellent performer. His listeners rejoiced while he pressed the keys, and the original way he moved up and down the keyboard provided an earthly imitation of the harmony of heaven".

The organ sonatas of Josef Rheinberger still feature large in the repertoire of church organists everywhere, thanks to their attractive melodies and fluent writing for the instrument. Rheinberger’s industry and his skill as a teacher have overshadowed his gifts as a composer in other genres, which this new release helps to redress with suites and tone-pictures for the combination of strings and organ. Oboist Cristina Monticoli also joins her Italian colleagues for two arrangements which sympathetically transfer the main melodies of movements from the organ sonatas to the oboe.

Born in 1765, the same year as Mozart, Anton Eberl also displayed great musical talent from an early age. Only his father’s bankruptcy saved him from a legal career, however, and he threw himself into the world of music with such success that even during their own lifetimes, pieces of Eberl appeared under Mozart’s name.