Founded in 2022 and directed by Marcello Trinchero, I CONTRAPPUNTISTI is a Baroque ensemble specializing in 17th and 18th-century music with a particular focus on the rediscovery of unpublished or rare repertoire on period instruments.

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Thanks to the deep awareness of the most modern philological research techniques and historically informed performance practice, I CONTRAPPUNTISTI have already presented several modern premieres of forgotten masterpieces of Italian and German Baroque music.

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Over the years, the members of the ensemble have improved their competence in the field of Baroque performance with such renowned professionals in the field as Giovanni Antonini, Alfredo Bernardini, Gabriele Cassone, Olivia Centurioni, Fabio Bonizzoni, Gaetano Nasillo, Evangelina Mascardi, and Rinaldo Alessandrini.

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The ensemble, mainly active in Italy and Switzerland, participates in various concert series and early music festivals.

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The musical repertoire of the last 500 years is incredibly vast, but mostly unperformed. In Western musical culture, there is a tendency to perform only a limited number of compositions written by a limited number of great composers, avoiding recently rediscovered masterpieces and the music that actually filled churches, theaters, and squares in the past. We have all had an opportunity to hear a cantata by Bach or a symphony by Mozart, but how many of us have heard a work written by Kraus, Römhildt or his teacher Kuhnau?

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Only by opening this Pandora's box can one come into contact with the true essence of different musical styles and their evolution, immersing oneself in a listening experience as unique as it is exciting.

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These pages reveal musical connections and insights  reminding us of the great names and pages that musical consumerism calls masterpieces, without being inferior to the latter in terms of originality or the quality of composition: like in a parallel musical world where, along with the music of the great masters we all know, there existed a lot of other works with their contaminations, mixtures, mutual interactions, and stylistic similarities.

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This allows us to understand that the great names and compositions that history has handed down to us are just a stylistically simplified representation of a much broader repertoire of immense artistic value, still to be rediscovered; a repertoire which needs its space on stage and due appreciation.