Fortuna scherzosa, after Telemann’s eponymous cantata, provides the textual framework for the works recorded here: the subject matter is hope, yearning for fortune, fulfilment and non-fulfilment, happiness and suffering. With her pure, straight and flexible voice, Ina Siedlaczek expresses these diverse emotions with great authenticity. Her music-making is historically informed, free and relaxed. Her interpretations are natural and, in the most positive sense, simple. Philipp Heinrich Erlebach's oeuvre comprised hundreds of works in nearly all genres current at the time. During a fire, however, the great majority of his music was lost: only around 70 of Erlebach’s works are known today. The occasion of the tercentenary of his death on 17 April 2014 will hopefully make them more famous once again. Johann Ulich was released from complete oblivion only recently when some of his manuscripts were rediscovered. Ulich had been Kapellmeister at the court of Zerbst between 1708 and 1742, and would therefore have been an accomplished musical director and a versatile composer. It is thought that the majority of his oeuvre was lost when the princes’ palace of Anhalt-Zerbst was destroyed during the Second World War.

Georg Philipp Telemann, however, won fame during his lifetime and remains one of the most famous composers of the Baroque era. However his cantata 'Fortuna scherzosa' did not come to light until 1999 when the historic music archive of the Berlin Sing-Akademie was rediscovered in Kiev (Ukraine), which included 16 works by Telemann that had, until then, been unknown.

At the age of around 23, Johann Philipp Krieger already was Kapellmeister to a margrave; he enjoyed 45 years of employment as a widely-known and famous Kapellmeister at the art-loving court at Saxe-Weißenfels, leaving behind a legacy of around 2500 compositions. Nonetheless, he is largely forgotten today as only a fraction of his compositions has survived. As a soloist, Ina Siedlaczek is in great demand both as an oratorio singer and as a consort singer. Alongside the classical oratorio repertoire, one of her particular interests is historically informed interpretation of vocal music of the era before Johann Sebastian Bach.