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.

This CD features German star violinist Christian Tetzlaff with virtuoso Romantic concertos by Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann. The Mendelssohn Concerto is one of the most frequently performed violin concertos of all time, with an unfailing popularity among audiences. Also included is Schumann’s more seldom recorded Fantasy for Violin and orchestra, which he completed shortly before writing the Concerto. One of Schumann’s last significant compositions, the long-lost Violin Concerto saw its première performance only in 1937, and was hailed by Yehudi Menuhin as the “historically missing link of the violin literature.”

After several successful years as a freelancer in Vienna it appears as if Mozart was no longer interested in pleasing Viennese society’s taste with music for pure entertainment. The composer continued down the path of personal discovery he had embarked upon the year before, and with ever more resolve: while Vienna was still “Piano Land” to Mozart, it was now on his terms. His head was primarily full of opera. Mozart’s work on Figaro led him to paint situation and emotion with new colouristic tools which would spill over into the piano concertos that followed it, each of them imbued with a more fluid sense of dialogue between soloist and orchestra. The first concerto on this recording exchanges material with Figaro’s rapid, conversational and changeable style. He expands the orchestration and “there are manic changes in the music.

With five discs and 100 tracks, this holiday set is expansive and interesting. Some of the sides will be familiar to nearly everyone – classics like Bing Crosby's version of “White Christmas” and Perry Como's “Winter Wonderland” pop up in the stores and all over the radio dial during the season’s festivities – but other selections here are fairly rare and give things a depth that a lot of holiday collections don’t reach…