Founded in 1988, Il Gardellino is a Flemish Baroque orchestra whose name is taken from the virtuosic goldfinch in Vivaldi’s eponymous concerto. What was applied as a playful metaphor almost 40 years ago, now encapsulates the identity of this internationally acclaimed Belgian period instrument ensemble acclaimed for their focus on works by Johann Sebastian Bach and his contemporaries Johann Friedrich Fasch, Carl Heinrich Graun, Handel, Johann Gottlieb Janitsch, Telemann, and Vivaldi. Their latest album showcases diverse and unique orchestral compositions by Christoph Graupner, whose employer, the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, prevented him from accepting the post of music director of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig in 1723 — a job that went to J.S. Bach. “Would he have been just as successful with the dignified councilors on the Pleibe as he was under the aegis of his aristocratic employer?” muses conductor Florian Heyerick. “By the end of this two-and-a-half-hour selection at the latest, we must thank His Serene Highness for not letting Graupner go three hundred years ago.”