Legrenzi: Sonata Quinta a quattro, viole da gamba o come piace aus "La Cetra", 1673

A series of the finest and too rare recordings, re-edited for the first time

The one and only album ever recorded by Nikolaus Harnoncourt for EMI will now meet its first international CD release.

A wide-ranging and superb collection of tunes which will bring directly you at the Leopold I court in Vienna in the late XVIIth century.

The pieces on this recording demonstrate the consummate art with which the German composers reconciled the new ideas imported from Italy at the very beginning of the 17th century (the principle of the basso continuo, accompanied monody, the concertato technique) with local traditions, thereby giving birth to works of a subtle beauty and an almost inexhaustible richness. This stylistic revolution paved the way to the flourishing of great forms like the vocal solo, the spiritual concert, the cantata, etc. cultivated by composers as different as Schütz, Buxtehude, Tunder and Erlebach: in the very heart of Baroque Europe the Germans were taking their place.