Two Orchestral Suites, Three Arias

Karlsson Barock is possibly the most prominent string ensemble for Baroque music in Northern Europe. On this album, Two Orchestral Suites & Three Arias, the orchestra is expanded with three woodwind players from another important Swedish ensemble: The Drottningholm Baroque Ensemble.

Göran Karlsson is one of Scandinavia’s leading early music harpsichordists and conductors. He has an impeccable sense of style and form, along with a flair for colorful interpretations and bold contrasts, that has made the world of music sit up and pay attention.

Helena Ek is a Swedish soprano with an impressively extensive repertoire that spans from early music to contemporary. She has teamed up with Göran Karlsson in a number of early music productions.

The first piece on this album is the orchestral suite by Georg Philipp Telemann, Overture – Suite in C Major, TWV 55:C6. Telemann’s Orchestral Suites – also known as ‘Ouvertures’ like Bach’s – were viewed as the pinnacle of the composer’s synthesis of Italian and French styles into something quintessentially German.

Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 1 in C Major, BWV 1066, concludes this wonderful album. Bach’s Four Orchestral Suites have helped challenge, alter and reshape what we understand about the composer. Mostly because we don’t often associate Bach, the sober Lutheran organist, with exuberant and joyful dance music. But these are works of considerable maturity and sophistication that deserve their place alongside the great scores of Bach’s last decades.