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Handel wrote the solo sonatas of Opus 1 for the professional musicians of his London opera orchestra. They demand considerable skill and stamina both from the soloist and the continuo. Prominent bass parts give the sonatas a contrapuntal strength and vitality, and Handel keeps the elements of display and purely musical argument in admirable balance in these works.

Though unfinished at his death, Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Art of Fugue is both his musical last testament and a cornerstone of Western composition. At once a miracle of intellectual achievement, musical invention, technical challenges and emotional power, The Art of Fugue draws on all of Bach’s resources as a master of counterpoint.

For this collection the Gonzaga Band has chosen some of the most beautiful music from the dawn of the baroque era in Italy. Some of the composers, such as Monteverdi, Frescobaldi, Merula and Grandi, are well known today. Others, such as Nicolò Corradini, Benedetto Re and Archangelo Crotti, are minor masters whose music has been unjustly forgotten.

Two of the works on this disc, the Concertos in F major and in E flat major, were composed soon after Bach's move to Hamburg. The Concerto in C minor had been composed some 20 years earlier and the composer himself described it as 'one of my showpieces', implying that he performed it regularly.

La Barcha d'Amore is an eclectic, contrasting selection of some of the most beautiful vocal and instrumental music inspired by mythology and 17th-century European love poetry. It is the personal testimony of Jordi Savall's unwavering and rigorous commitment to the performance of music from the Middle Ages to the age of Classicism using 'historically informed' instruments and performance techniques.