A meeting of top-flight musicians bearing small gifts: recorder player Dorothee Oberlinger and countertenor Andreas Scholl work together for the first time on this CD “Bach – Small Gifts”. Although Johann Sebastian Bach wrote neither a sonata nor a concerto for the recorder, he constantly made use of the instrument in special works. In the Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 2 and 4 the recorder finds its place alongside the other solo instruments. In the cantatas that he wrote for the church, the composer often used the recorder as an accompaniment to the solo voice. The concertante virtuosity and song-like expressiveness of the recorder now form the centrepiece of star recorder player and ECHO Klassik winner Dorothee Oberlinger’s new Bach CD. Alongside her is the world-renowned countertenor Andreas Scholl, who sings two arias from cantatas with a recorder accompaniment, as well as Bach’s solo cantata “Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust”. He sings in a uniquely moving and gently undulant style, which exhibits a special artistic propinquity to Bach. The solo cantata “Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust” BWV 170 for alto and strings was written in 1726 and the text is a lament about sinful earthly life. In the two arias of this cantata, two recorders are featured at various points. This unusual instrumental line-up is also found in the aria “Die Obrigkeit ist Gottes Gabe” for alto voice, two recorders and basso continuo, and in the cantata “Preise, Jerusalem, den Herrn” BWV 119, as well as the first aria from the cantata BWV 82 “Jesus schläft, was soll ich hoffen?”. The recorder’s concertante characteristics are indeed central to the Brandenburg Concertos nos. 2 and 4. Dorothee Oberlinger plays the recorder and conducts this entire recording with her group, Ensemble 1700. The Harpsichord Concerto in F minor, BWV 1056, which also features on this CD, is not an original composition by Bach, but an arrangement of parts of a violin concerto which has not been handed down to us.