For their 25th anniversary, caterva musica has recorded virtuoso concertos for all instrumental groups in the ensemble. L'arte del virtuoso (The Art of the Virtuoso) is a four-part series released by MDG. The programme on Vol.3 includes Franz Benda's dramatic Flute Concerto, lively chamber music by Telemann, Graun and Vivaldi, as well as a very special rarity: Johann Sebastian Bach's large-scale Sinfonia, BWV1045, with concertante violin. One of the most amazing and most puzzling of Bach's compositions, the Sinfonia was perhaps meant as an overture to a festive cantata which has been lost to time. Semiquaver figures run through all the parts in a triumphant eruption of sound. Virtuosic violin fireworks over suspended harmonic motion create an almost hypnotic atmosphere, not unlike minimal music.

Franz Benda and Johann Gottlieb Graun were able to do what Bach could not: for decades they were in the service of the art-loving King Frederick II of Prussia. Benda's Flute Concerto, with its stormy and dramatic character, illustrates the high level of the Potsdam court orchestra, as does the distinctive Quartet in which Graun gave the viola da gamba a ludicrously demanding part. Telemann's Hunting Overture provides an opulent and furious prelude that unfolds a striking effect, especially in MDG's three-dimensional reproduction. In the second movement of Vivaldi's Quartet, oboe and flute embrace each other in an intimate love duet, prefaced with an unusual surprise as an anticipation of caterva musica's future projects.