Graun: Concerti & Sinfonie

During their lifetime the »fiery instrumental composers« Johann Gottlieb and Carl Heinrich Graun ranked with those famous musicians whose fame extended far beyond Berlin and Potsdam. Our latest CD again offers an appealing and entertaining program featuring concerti by the two brothers. Here they are entirely in their element with technical and virtuosic refinements and rhythmically electrifying formulations. All the stylistic idioms of the transitional period between the high baroque and what we today call »classicism« are encountered in these works. Unfortunately, the brief attributions »del Sig. re Graun« or »di Graun« mean that the concerti cannot always be assigned with certainty to one or the other of the two. No matter, even if the particular author cannot be identified with one-hundred-percent accuracy, listeners can look forward to the boundless variety and full color of good concerto music from the mid-eighteenth century in all its multifaceted stylistic splendor.