After being the king of court instruments in the seventeenth century, a symbol of refined entertainment, the lute was gradually abandoned in the following century. A small group of virtuosos and composers nevertheless refused to accept this predicted decline: these musicians moved the epicenter of its influence to the courts of Vienna, Bayreuth and Dresden, adapting the codes and forms of the gallant style to the lute, which for the first time integrated the orchestra in its own right. Miguel Rincón and Il Pomo d’Oro bring together concertos by Carl Kohaut (1726–84), Johann Friedrich Fasch (1688–1758), and Jakob Friedrich Kleinknecht (1722-94), and a trio by Bernhard Joachim Hagen (d.1787), also recorded here for the first time. These splendid, inventive and virtuoso works reveal the richness of timbre and expression of an instrument that, at the crossroads of the Baroque, the Sturm und Drang and the gallant style, was in its last throes. Most works are new to the WFMT library and the concerto by Kleinknecht is a world premiere recording.