To celebrate the composer's 250th birthday, this edition presents all available chamber music compositions by Josef Elsner in new recordings of historically informed interpretations. Joseph Elsner was born in the town of Grottkau (Grotków) in Silesia. He initially attended the Dominican monastery school in Breslau (Wroclaw) where he was trained as choirboy and violinist and afterwards the Jesuit School as well as the Leopoldinum where at first he studied theology and later medicine. Aged twenty he moved to Vienna and chose a musical career. Elsner finally ran the Main School for Music (Szkola Glówna Muzyki) at Warsaw University where his students included Frédéric Chopin, Feliks Ignacy Dobrzynski et al. Towards the end of his life Elsner compiled a comprehensively commented catalogue of his musical pieces the German original of which has unfortunately been lost. What remains is a Polish translation, nowadays considered the main source for Elsner's life and work.