Gramophone Magazine
January 2020
Editor's Choice

Xenia Löffler (oboe)

Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin

The Berlin public of the mid-Eighteenth Century was fascinated by the ‘original genius’ of C. P. E. Bach and never tired of listening to his concertos.

These works call for a talented soloist capable of mastering the multiple facets of an original and finely worked musical texture: a challenge taken up with panache (and on a period instrument) by the oboist Xenia Löffler, surrounded by her distinguished colleagues of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin.

"Mingling athletic precision and devil-may-care abandon, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin relish the music’s seething energy and harmonic and dynamic shocks...Löffler is all you could ask in this repertoire, phrasing and colouring with spontaneous flair, bringing a twinkling sense of fun (not a word readily associated with CPE) to the finales and a singing eloquence to the slow movements." - Gramophone Magazine, January 2020.