Beyond Vivaldi: Lute Concertos

Beyond Vivaldi: Lute Concertos shines light on a neglected corner of the Baroque repertoire — the lute concerto, a genre that flourished briefly in the German-speaking world during the first half of the 18th century before the instrument fell out of fashion entirely.

Lutenist Evangelina Mascardi and the period ensemble Estrovagante, directed from the harpsichord by Riccardo Doni, present five works spanning the genre's golden decade: Vivaldi's celebrated RV93 (probably written in Prague for an aristocratic patron), two concertos by J.S. Bach's favorite pupil Johann Ludwig Krebs, and rare works by Kleinknecht and Hagen from the court of Bayreuth, and the Viennese virtuoso Karl Kohaut — whose E-major concerto, despite being published in a scholarly edition in 1942, appears here in its First Commercial Recording.

The album was recorded in the atmospheric Archivio Storico Diocesano in Vigevano, Italy, in November 2024, and presents all five works with the intimate scale they would originally have enjoyed — a small string ensemble closely shadowing the lute's voice, the harpsichord and theorbo grounding the texture below.

Mascardi plays a 14-course swan-neck baroque lute by Cezar Mateus, and the ensemble's instruments span four centuries of lutherie, from anonymous 18th-century originals to modern reconstructions.

Evangelina Mascardi, Lute Estrovagante Riccardo Doni, Harpsichord & Direction