A unique disc devoted to cello Galant music composed mid-18th Century in the areas of Mannheim and Berlin.

Both C.P.E. Bach and Franz Benda were composers who enjoyed the favour of the court of Frederick the Great and who developed a highly individual and lasting style of music in the monarch's service. Though ‘Old Fritz’ demanded works in the pleasing galant style for his almost daily music sessions from his court musicians, Franz Benda succeeded in humouring the king without stooping to compromise quality. His three concertos for flute seem to have been tailor-made for Frederick II; in the galant style, yet full of sensitivity and profound emotion.

The Benda family has occupied an important and continuing place in music in Germany for some 250 years. The founder of the musical dynasty, Jan Jiří Benda, was born in 1686 in a village in Bohemia and combined the trades of weaver and musician. He married Dorota Brixi, a member of the Skalsko branch of a distinguished family of Czech musicians, and five of their six children became musicians, working in Germany. There the eldest son of the family, František, composer of some eighty violin sonatas and fifteen concertos, entered the service of the Prussian Crown Prince, continuing as Konzertmeister after the latter's accession to the throne as Frederick the Great.

Another in the long line of outstanding Bohemian musical families the Bendas were similarly part of the diaspora that saw them moving across the continent in search of court and church appointments to further their careers. The Catholic Frantisek thus acquired a new religion as well as a new name becoming the Protestant Franz Benda. He served in Vienna, Warsaw and Dresden in a rapid space of time before following the Prussian Crown Prince, now King, to Potsdam where he was to remain for the rest of his life, having finally succeeded the court favourite and violinist-Konzertmeister Carl Gottlieb Graun.

Franz Benda (1709-1786) worked for much of his life at the court of Frederick the Great. He was a prolific composer but very few of his works were published. His brother Georg (1722-1795) received a similar education as choirboy, violinist and harpsichordist. Il Gardellino was founded in 1988 and its members are specialists in performance on early instruments.