Freiburger BarockConsort

The Freiburger BarockConsort ("Freiburg Baroque Consort") is an offshoot of the larger Freiburger Barockorchester, with both ensembles performing chamber music of the 17th and 18th centuries. At the core of its repertory is the small-ensemble music of Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, Georg Muffat, and Antonio Bertali. The main Freiburger Barockorchester was formed in 1985 by a group of string students at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg who wanted to study historically informed performance styles. Its founding directors were Petra Müllejans and Gottfried von der Goltz, both of whom remained active with the group and its smaller offshoot, the Freiburger BarockConsort, which took shape during the first decade of the larger ensemble's activity. The Freiburger BarockConsort's purpose was to enable the players to perform Baroque music for smaller ensembles, and as such, its membership has been flexible, ranging from a few players up to eight. All of the members belong to the larger Freiburger Barockorchester. The group has focused on the virtuoso chamber music of Biber, Schmelzer, Muffat, and Bertali, but its horizons extend well beyond that into the music of England, northern Germany, the Habsburg Empire, and Italy, much of it historically neglected. The Freiburger BarockConsort also sometimes incorporates contemporary music into its programs. It has often joined with the vocal ensemble Vox Luminis to perform and record chamber vocal music, but it also maintains an independent concert schedule of instrumental music in Freiburg and beyond. The Freiburger BarockConsort made its first recording in 1995, just two years after the debut of the larger group, with an album of sonatas by Biber and Schmelzer. Both ensembles have recorded for the Deutsche Harmonia Mundi label; the Freiburger BarockConsort has also released albums on Carus and Alpha. In 2003, the group was among the first to record the Quatuors Parisiennes of Telemann, a composer whose obscure music it has been keen to unearth. For a 2021 Alpha release, the Freiburger BarockConsort joined with Vox Luminis for a recording of Biber's Requiem in F minor.
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