Berlin is a long way from Paris, and Frederick the Great did not allow French opera-ballets in his opera house. If you wanted to hear the latest and most fashionable items from Paris in eighteenth-century Berlin, you had to play it yourself. Thus the viola da gamba virtuoso Ludwig Christian Hesse created Hausmusik arrangements for two gambas of many such works, including Les Surprises de l'amour by Jean-Philippe Rameau, almost certainly for the instruction and entertainment of his student, the k...