Baroque Concertos for Wind Instruments (Graun, Graupner, Pez) - Austrian Tonkunstler Orchestra

The three baroque concertos recorded here have one thing in common: in all of them, the solo instruments are pitted against an orchestral body. 
  
The oldest of the three concertos is the one by Johann Christoph Pez (or Petz), who was probably a pupil of Kerll. He was employed as singer and violinist successively at St. Peter's, Munich (the city of his birth), Liege, Bonn, and Stuttgart. In Stuttgart he finally became Court Conductor to the Duke of Wurttemberg, and it was in this city that he died. 

His F major Concerto is still in the old style. Though concertante elements alternate with orchestral ones in the usual concerto manner, structurally the seven movements point to the suite form rather than to that of the concerto. The large Passacaglia near the end is a formal device which was especially dear to Couperin. The performance recorded here is based on the edition of the original score first printed in the Denkmaler der Tonkunst in Bavaria in 1928.

The Graun concerto, later in date, is in the regular three-movement concerto form. Johann  Gottlieb  Graun   studied  the   violin first with Pisendel and later in Italy with Tartini. His first post was as a violinist in the Dresden Court Orchestra. Later he became concertmaster at Merseburg, where he was the teacher of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach. Finally he went to Berlin, and he stayed there till his death, filling the post of conductor of Frederick the Great' s Royal Orchestra. Graun's two brothers, August Friedrich and Karl Heinrich, were also well-known composers. This recording of his D major Concerto is based on the instrumental parts in the Library of the Swedish Music Academy.