Whereas Vivaldi needs no introduction whatsoever and other names (Caldara, Fasch, Tůma) are familiar to lovers of Baroque music, even specialists have only been getting to know the remarkable oeuvres of Reichenauer and Jiránek over the past few years, owing in large part to Supraphon’s Music from Eighteenth-Century Prague series.

Prague is that which all these composers had in common; for some of them the city represented a significant part of their career, for others a short episode or merely a way station. The Czech capital was a melting pot in which Dresden, Vienna, Naples and Venice came together and the influences of all the major European musical centres were recast. In aristocrats’ exquisite palaces, and to the delight of their masters, these superlative artists performed their own chamber music, whose originality and splendour we can rediscover today.

The CD blends the refinement and spontaneous musicality of the renowned Collegium Marianum with the Italian vivacity of their special guest, the phenomenal bassoonist Sergio Azzolini.