No Strings Attached

With the release of “The Queen's Favourites” in 2021, La Petite Écurie offered listeners a glimpse into the original repertoire for oboe ensemble, which was very fashionable during the time of Queen Anne (around 1700). The debut album received five Diapasons from the renowned French specialist magazine as well as numerous positive reviews. The International Double Reed Society praised the ‘beautiful sound, precise intonation, rhythmic power and wonderful sense of style’. The inspiration for La Petite Écurie's latest album, “No Strings Attached”, comes from the preface to Johann Christian Schieferdecker's “Dreizehn Musikalischen Konzerten”, which states: ‘They are composed with such care that, in the absence of the necessary people, they can be performed with only 4 parts, namely 3 oboes and 1 bassoon’. With this sentence, Schieferdecker brings the basic idea to the point: strings are sometimes superfluous! “No Strings Attached” presents music by composers from Germany (Schieferdecker & Keiser), France (Boismortier & Dornel), Italy (Vivaldi) and England (Handel & Purcell), whose compositions showcase the endless virtuoso possibilities of the oboe ensemble.