Sinfonias from the Enlightenment (2008)

The imaginatively named Austrian chamber group moderntimes_1800 was founded in 2003; this Challenge Classics release Sinfonias from the Enlightenment is its third release. Its two discs survey some especially important, and unfamiliar, eighteenth century symphonies, including the jewels in this particular crown: two sinfonias of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach completely unknown to either Wotquenne or Helm that surfaced as part of the missing Berliner Singakademie collection discovered in Kiev in 1999. The goal of moderntimes ... Read More

The imaginatively named Austrian chamber group moderntimes_1800 was founded in 2003; this Challenge Classics release Sinfonias from the Enlightenment is its third release. Its two discs survey some especially important, and unfamiliar, eighteenth century symphonies, including the jewels in this particular crown: two sinfonias of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach completely unknown to either Wotquenne or Helm that surfaced as part of the missing Berliner Singakademie collection discovered in Kiev in 1999. The goal of moderntimes_1800 is to create a group that is proficient in both historic and modern literature and they play both original instruments and standard ones. The effect is a very pleasing, warm, and well-rounded sound that delivers the concision of a period instrument ensemble without sounding scrawny or errant in pitch.The "new," never before recorded C.P.E. Bach sinfonias are truly the highlights of the collection; they sound incontrovertibly like him, unpredictable, unapologetically bipolar and... Read Less