The baroque vir­tu­osi en­semble, Il Giardino Ar­monico, proves how ex­cit­ing ori­gin­al in­stru­ments can be by clear­ing out the in­tel­lec­tu­al and sen­su­ous bal­last that a work ac­cu­mu­lates over the cen­tur­ies and al­low­ing it to sparkle in its genu­ine col­ours. The mu­si­cians fea­tured in Paul Fen­k­art’s cap­tiv­at­ing new film are Gio­vanni Ant­onini (flute), En­rico Ono­fri (vi­ol­in), Vit­torio Ghielmi (vi­ola da gamba), Luca Pi­anca (lute) and Ot­tavio Dantone (harp­si­chord).

Salzburg’s mag­ni­fi­cent Man­ner­ist palace at Hell­brunn provides evoc­at­ive set­tings for the group’s re­cit­als of rarely-per­formed works from the French-style baroque rep­er­toire. Writ­ten around the turn of the 17^th cen­tury, this mu­sic­al style in­flu­enced most of European courtly cul­ture.

Hell­brunn Palace - an ar­chi­tec­tur­al mas­ter­piece -still boasts the en­chant­ing gar­dens, mys­tic grot­toes, wa­ter-powered fig­ures, trick foun­tains and mech­an­ic­al theatre that de­lighted its ori­gin­al vis­it­ors. Hid­den in the hills of its park is a nat­ur­al stone quarry, trans­formed cen­tur­ies ago in­to a unique open-air theatre know today as the ‘Steintheat­er’. These dif­fer­ent loc­a­tions around the palace provide the back­drop scenery as Il Giardino Ar­monico per­forms in peri­od cos­tumes and view­ers are plunged in­to the world of the baroque. In sev­er­al se­quences, the in­ter­na­tion­al dance com­pany, ‘Mu­sica et Saltat­or­ia’, can be seen per­form­ing his­tor­ic­ally au­then­t­ic bal­let from the baroque peri­od. Among the fea­tured com­posers are Rameau, Marais, For­queray, de Visée, Tele­mann, Chédev­ille and Dieu­part.

This rep­er­toire-jew­el-case has also been re­leased on DVD.