The period of the union between Saxony and Poland (1697-1763) was one of the most illustrious periods of Dresden’s musical history. It began with the election of Augustus the Strong as King of Poland and lasted until the end of the Seven Years War. The Hofkapelle, the Court orchestra, formed the hub of music life in Dresden; it had been directed since 1733 by Johann Adolph Hasse, one of its members being the brilliant concert master and Vivaldi pupil Johann Georg Pisendel. Pisendel visited the great centres of music in Europe, always scouting for new musical treasures. Thus the Court music archive was correspondingly extensive as a collection of the works of outstanding European composers. When the archive burned down in 1760, the sole music literature to be saved was the repertoire in use at that time, or stored elsewhere. These involved around 1750 works, which were kept in the so-called “Schrank (Cabinet) No: II” and for long years fell into oblivion.

The Ensemble Diderot has pulled some of these treasures out of the cabinet and makes them resound again for the first time in almost three hundred years. George Frideric Handel himself came to the glorious city on the Elbe in 1719, and Telemann and Johann Joseph Fux, also his two Czech pupils Johann George Orschler and František Ignać Tůma, visited or worked in Dresden. The programme resounding in Bayreuth is a compilation of trio sonatas by five different composers who all lived at the same time but each of whom was active in a very different way: one city, one musical genre – and yet an abundance of different modes of expression!