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Recorder player Lucie Horsch is a sensation and a prodigy, appearing in national and international venues beginning in her early teens. By her early twenties, Horsch had already released three albums on the major Decca label.

Horsch was born in Amsterdam in 1999. Both of her parents are musicians; her father is a principal cellist with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Horsch, however, liked the sound of the recorder and decided on a career playing the instrument when she was five. She began taking lessons in Amsterdam, and when she was nine, she made a solo appearance at an outdoor children's concert on the city's Prinsengracht canal. Continuing to progress rapidly, she enrolled at the Amsterdam Conservatory's youth Sweelinck Academy program in 2011, studying piano as well as recorder. Horsch was featured in 2013 on the nationally broadcast Dutch television program The Evening of the Young Musician and was voted the top young musician in the Netherlands by viewers. That led to an appearance the following year at Eurovision Young Musicians, a classical competition associated with the popular Eurovision Song Contest, in Cologne, Germany.

Horsch enrolled at the Amsterdam Conservatory, where she continued to study recorder and piano and also began voice classes. A Concertgebouw Young Talent Award in 2016 led to her signing to Decca and to the release of her debut album, Vivaldi, featuring the composer's difficult flute concertos in 2016; the album won the Edison Klassiek award, the Netherlands' most important recording-industry award, for best debut album. Horsch has appeared with various major orchestras, including the Residentie Orkest of The Hague, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the Hong Kong Philharmonic. In 2019, she released the album Baroque Journey with Britain's Academy of Ancient Music and violinist/leader Bojan Čičić, featuring concertos by Giuseppe Sammartini, Bach, and Handel. Horsch received the prestigious Nederlandse Muziekprijs in 2020. She returned with the album Origins, featuring a wide range of vernacular-inspired material from Bartók to Charlie Parker, in 2022. ~ James Manheim

In his day, Johann Sebastian Bach was better known as a virtuoso organist than as a composer. His sacred music, organ and choral works, and other instrumental music had an enthusiasm and seeming freedom that concealed immense rigor. Bach's use of counterpoint was brilliant and innovative, and the immense complexities of his compositional style -- which often included religious and numerological symbols that seem to fit perfectly together in a profound puzzle of special codes -- still amaze musicians today. Many consider him the greatest composer of all time.

Bach was born in Eisenach in 1685. He was taught to play the violin and harpsichord by his father, Johann Ambrosius, a court trumpeter in the service of the Duke of Eisenach. Young Johann was not yet ten when his father died, leaving him orphaned. He was taken in by his recently married oldest brother, Johann Christoph, who lived in Ohrdruf. Because of his excellent singing voice, Bach attained a position at the Michaelis monastery at Lüneberg in 1700. His voice changed a short while later, but he stayed on as an instrumentalist. After taking a short-lived post in Weimar in 1703 as a violinist, Bach became organist at the Neue Kirche in Arnstadt (1703-1707). His relationship with the church council was tenuous as the young musician often shirked his responsibilities, preferring to practice the organ. One account describes a four-month leave granted Bach to travel to Lubeck, where he would familiarize himself with the music of Dietrich Buxtehude. He returned to Arnstadt long after he was expected and much to the dismay of the council. He then briefly served at St. Blasius in Mühlhausen as organist, beginning in June 1707, and married his cousin, Maria Barbara Bach, that fall. Bach composed his famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor (BWV 565) and his first cantatas while in Mühlhausen, but quickly outgrew the musical resources of the town. He next took a post for the Duke of Sachsen-Weimar in 1708, serving as court organist and playing in the orchestra, eventually becoming its leader in 1714. He wrote many organ compositions during this period, including his Orgel-Büchlein, and also began writing the preludes and fugues that would become Das wohltemperierte Klavier (The Well-Tempered Klavier). Owing to politics between the Duke and his officials, Bach left Weimar and secured a post in December 1717 as Kapellmeister at Köthen. In 1720, Bach's wife suddenly died, leaving him with four children (three others had died in infancy). A short while later, he met his second wife, soprano Anna Magdalena Wilcke, whom he married in December 1721. She would bear 13 children, though only five would survive childhood. The six Brandenburg Concertos (BWV 1046-51), among many other secular works, date from his Köthen years. Bach became Kantor of the Thomas School in Leipzig in May 1723 (after the post was turned down by Georg Philipp Telemann) and held the position until his death. It was in Leipzig that he composed the bulk of his religious and secular cantatas. Bach eventually became dissatisfied with this post, not only because of its meager financial rewards, but also because of onerous duties and inadequate facilities. Thus he took on other projects, chief among which was the directorship of the city's Collegium Musicum, an ensemble of professional and amateur musicians who gave weekly concerts, in 1729. He also became music director at the Dresden Court in 1736, in the service of Frederick Augustus II; though his duties were vague and apparently few, they allowed him the freedom to compose what he wanted. Bach began making trips to Berlin in the 1740s, not least because his son Carl Philipp Emanuel served as a court musician there. The Goldberg Variations, one of the few pieces by Bach to be published in his lifetime, appeared in 1741. In May 1747, the composer was warmly received by King Frederick II of Prussia, for whom he wrote the gloriously abstruse Musical Offering (BWV 1079). Among Bach's last works was his 1749 Mass in B minor. Besieged by diabetes, he died on July 28, 1750. ~ Robert Cummings

Georg Philipp Telemann was born in Magdeburg, the son of a Lutheran deacon who died in 1685, leaving the mother to raise their three children alone. The youth showed remarkable talent in music but was temporarily discouraged in his chosen pursuit by Puritan Lutherans, who told Telemann's mother that he would turn out no better than "a clown, a tightrope walker or a marmot-trainer." In opposition to his mother's wishes, Telemann continued to study in secrecy until she relented, allowing him to train under the highly respected Kantor Benedict Christiani at the Old City School. Outside of some early lessons in reading tablature, Telemann was self-taught and was capable of playing the flute, violin, viola da gamba, oboe, trombone, double bass, and several keyboard instruments.

Telemann began to write music from childhood, producing an opera, Sigismundus, by age 12. He was sent away to Zellerfeld in 1694; at the age of 20, the composer resolved to study law in Leipzig, but a chance meeting in Halle with 16-year-old Georg Friedrich Handel appears to have drawn him back to music. Telemann began writing cantatas for a church in Leipzig and quickly became a local celebrity. In 1702, he was named director of the Leipzig Opera, and over the next three years, he wrote four operas specifically for this company. Early on, Telemann's career was marked by sharp contrasts, both professionally and personally. In 1705, he became the Kapellmeister in Sorau, now part of Poland, only serving three years before moving on to the court in Eisenach (1708-1712). In 1712, Telemann accepted an appointment in Frankfurt to the post of Kapellmeister at the Church of the Barefoot Friars and as director of municipal music. Telemann married Amalie Eberlin in 1709, who died in childbirth during the first year of their union. Telemann remarried in 1714 to Maria Katharina Textor, whose gambling addiction was so bad the citizens of Hamburg took up a collection in order to save the couple from bankruptcy. Later, Telemann's second spouse would abandon him in favor of a Swedish military officer.

In 1721, Telemann's opera Der geduldige Socrates was performed in Hamburg. That same year, Hamburg's officials awarded Telemann the positions of Kantor of the Johanneum and musical director of the city's principal churches. In doing so, Telemann accepted the responsibility of writing two cantatas for every Sunday, a new Passion setting annually, and contributing music to a wide variety of liturgical and civic events. Telemann readily met these obligations and in 1722 accepted the directorship of the Hamburg Opera, serving until its closure in 1738.

Telemann was also one of the first composers to concentrate on the business of publishing his own music, and at least forty early prints of his music are known from editions which he prepared and sold himself. These published editions were in some cases extremely popular and spread Telemann's fame throughout Europe; in particular, the Der Getreue Musik Meister (1728), Musique de Table (or Tafelmusik, 1733), and the 6 Concerts et 6 Suites (1734) were in wide use during the composer's lifetime. Starting in the 1740s until about 1755, Telemann focused less on composition, turning his attentions to the study of music theory. He wrote many oratorios in the mid-1750s, including Donnerode (1756), Das befreite Israel (1759), and Die Auferstehung und Himmelfährt Jesu (1760). Telemann's long life ended at the age of 86 in 1767.

Georg Philipp Telemann was considered the most important German composer of his day, and his reputation outlasted him for some time, but ultimately it was unable to withstand the shadow cast by the growing popularity of his contemporary, Johann Sebastian Bach. Telemann's enormous output, perhaps the largest of any classical composer in history, includes parts of at least 31 cantata cycles, many operas, concertos, oratorios, songs, music for civic occasions and church services, passions, orchestral suites, and abundant amounts of chamber music. While many of these works have been lost, most still exist, and the sheer bulk of his creativity has made it difficult for scholars and performers alike. The inevitable revival of interest in Telemann did not arrive until the 1920s but has grown exponentially ever since, and in the 21st century, more of Telemann's music is played, known, understood, and studied than at any time in history. ~ TiVo Staff

Most music lovers have encountered George Frederick Handel through holiday-time renditions of the Messiah's "Hallelujah" chorus. And many of them know and love that oratorio on Christ's life, death, and resurrection, as well as a few other greatest hits like the orchestral Water Music and Royal Fireworks Music, and perhaps bits of Judas Maccabeus or one of the other English oratorios. Yet his operas, for which he was widely known in his own time, are the province mainly of specialists in Baroque music, and the events of his life, even though they reflected some of the most important musical issues of the day, have never become as familiar as the careers of Bach or Mozart. Perhaps the single word that best describes his life and music is "cosmopolitan": he was a German composer, trained in Italy, who spent most of his life in England.

Handel was born in the German city of Halle on February 23, 1685. His father noted but did not nurture his musical talent, and he had to sneak a small keyboard instrument into his attic to practice. As a child he studied music with Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow, organist at the Liebfrauenkirche, and for a time he seemed destined for a career as a church organist himself. After studying law briefly at the University of Halle, Handel began serving as organist on March 13, 1702, at the Domkirche there. Dissatisfied, he took a post as violinist in the Hamburg opera orchestra in 1703, and his frustration with musically provincial northern Germany was perhaps shown when he fought a duel the following year with the composer Mattheson over the accompaniment to one of Mattheson's operas. In 1706 Handel took off for Italy, then the font of operatic innovation, and mastered contemporary trends in Italian opera seria. He returned to Germany to become court composer in Hannover, whose rulers were linked by family ties with the British throne; his patron there, the Elector of Hannover, became King George I of England. English audiences took to his 1711 opera Rinaldo, and several years later Handel jumped at the chance to move to England permanently. He impressed King George early on with the Water Music of 1716, written as entertainment for a royal boat outing. Much of his keyboard music, including the suite with the famous melody "The Harmonious Blacksmith" dates from just before his going to Italy and his first decade in England. For 18 months, between 1717 and 1719, Handel was house composer to the Duke of Chandos, for whom he composed the 11 Chandos Anthems for chorus and string orchestra. He also founded the Royal Academy of Music, a new opera company in London, with the support of the Duke and other patrons. Through the 1720s Handel composed Italian operatic masterpieces for London stages: Ottone, Serse (Xerxes), and other works often based on classical stories. His popularity was dented, though, by new English-language works of a less formal character, and in the 1730s and 1740s, after the Academy failed, Handel turned to the oratorio, a grand form that attracted England's new middle-class audiences. Not only Messiah but also Israel in Egypt, Samson, Saul, and many other works established him as a venerated elder of English music. The oratorios displayed to maximum effect Handel's melodic gift and the sense of timing he brought to big choral numbers. Among the most popular of all the oratorios was Judas Maccabeus, composed in 32 days in 1746. His Concerti grossi, Op. 6, and organ concertos also appeared in the same period. In 1737, Handel suffered a stroke, which caused both temporary paralysis in his right arm and some loss of his mental faculties, but he recovered sufficiently to carry on most normal activity. He was urged to write an autobiography, but never did. Blind in old age, he continued to compose. He died in London on April 14, 1759. More than 3,000 mourners were present for the funeral of the famous composer. He was buried at Westminster Abbey and received full state honors. Beethoven thought Handel the greatest of all his predecessors; he once said, "I would bare my head and kneel at his grave." ~ TiVo Staff