With this album, the Neues Bachisches Collegium Musicum and its artistic director Reinhard Goebel launch a new series offering a vivid glimpse into Leipzig’s rich musical life at the beginning of the eighteenth century. At the time, the city was home to numerous Collegia Musica – academic ensembles dedicated to the performance of the latest vocal and instrumental works – which played a central role in shaping its musical culture. Georg Philipp Telemann, Johann Friedrich Fasch, Christoph Graupner and Johann David Heinichen were among the leading figures active within these circles, though much of their repertoire can only be vaguely reconstructed today. Goebel curates a “roughly similar” program that reflects this pre-Bach world, featuring overtures by Johann Beer and Heinichen, a horn concerto by Georg Melchior Hoffmann (all in world premiere recordings), as well as concertos by Fasch, Graupner and Telemann. The solo parts are performed by recorder player Max Volbers and Clemens Röger, principal horn of the Gewandhausorchester.