To mark the 250th anniversary of the death of Georg Philipp Telemann, mandolinist Alon Sariel presents a diverse compilation of remarkable works by the great German composer. The compilation is enriched with works by three of Telemann’s contemporaries: Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Carl Friedrich Abel and Johann Friedrich Fasch, all three of whom engaged in the creative spirit of the Hamburg composer and his works. Together with his ensemble Concerto Foscari he recorded repertoire that has never been heard before in this musical form. This recording is now available on Vinyl.

The trio sonatas by Telemann were already regarded by his contemporaries as “models of their kind”, they demonstrate Telemann’s imaginative composing style. Compagnia Transalpina under the direction of Andreas Böhlen highlights the colourful partnership of recorder and oboe, complimented by a rich bass line combining bassoon, cello and harpsichord. Sumptuous ornamentation is applied to the upper lines, inspired by Telemann’s own writing, resulting in dynamic and flamboyant ensemble playing. Recorder player and jazz-saxophonist Andreas Böhlen, professor for recorder at the renowned Schola Cantorum in Basel, Switzerland, has combined forces on this recording with leading baroque oboist Andreas Helm, professor in Vienna. Produced as a SuperAudioCD, this album presents versions in high-resolution stereo as well as in multi-channel surround sound.

Georg Philipp Telemann was one of the most successful and wealthiest German Baroque composers and his Twelve Fantasias for solo flute, TWV 40:2–13 were written between 1727 and 1732. The pieces are given a systematic structure with the pieces in alphabetical order by key, A to G, major and minor. In these solo Fantasias, Telemann combines secular and sacred music using a variety of forms. Solemn courtly dances and rhythmic central European country dances engage in dialogue with pieces that are more akin to the serious and strictly polyphonic musical tradition of the Catholic Mass. Finnish flautist Sami Junnonen performs on a modern Japanese Muramatsu flute, hand-crafted in twenty-four carat gold in the 2000s.

This album owes its title ‘Beauté barbare’ to Telemann who described the music he discovered during a trip to Upper Silesia in 1705 as existing ‘in its true barbaric beauty’. Did he mean ‘wild’? ‘Exotic’? In any case, the composer was fascinated: ‘An attentive observer could gather from [those musicians] enough ideas in eight days to last a lifetime.’ An equally passionate admirer of folk music, whose Serbian roots link him to these cultures, François Lazarevitch has conceived this wildly swirling programme that mixes Telemann (Concerto Polonois) and eastern European Romani music of the eighteenth century, thanks to a collection of dance tunes from 1730 that he has unearthed. ‘What is interesting for us as Baroque performers is to try to find in the pieces of “art music” everything that is not written down, namely the energy and “swing” of the folk dances. I like the music we play not to sound like early music’, says the flautist and founder of Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien, who are joined for the occasion by a cymbalom virtuoso and a wide variety of percussion instruments.

The Norwegian early music ensemble Barokkanerne offers a new CD on the LAWO Classics label devoted to the music of Georg Philipp Telemann, one of music history's most productive composers! Leading the ensemble is Kati Debretzeni (concertmaster of Sir John Elliot Gardiner's English Baroque Soloists).

This most important first release marks the start of a major extended project to record, close to entirety, the world's most famous, historic and valuable violins. Some of these prized instruments have not been played for centuries, being specially released for this Peter Sheppard Skaerved-created series by Divine Art Recordings and it's Athene label. This initial, double-disc album finds Mr. Skaerved playing the complete Telemann Violin and Flute Fantasies on the oldest violin of them all, the sublime Andrea Amati instrument of 1570. As well as being internationally recognized as a leading interpreter of music new and old, Peter Sheppard Sk�rved is the only violinist to have performed on the personal violins of Viotti, Paganini, Joachim, Kreisler and Ole Bull. This new series will feature the acclaimed violinist playing music on these and other rare instruments, many of which only he has been granted access to.

Classical Music

Expert in Baroque repertoire and making period discoveries, the Philadelphia-based ensemble Tempesta di Mare extends the commemoration of the 250th anniversary of Telemann’s death with this unique album played on historically authentic instruments. This recording is the first to bring together Telemann’s three surviving concerti-en-suite, from the intimate Concerto di camera to the more extravagant and impressive Concerto-Suites. Like many seventeenth-century German composers referring to their national idiom as a blend of French, Italian, and German styles, Telemann, who added rustic Polish music to this stylistic soup, quickly became the standard-bearer for this ‘mixed taste’ during the early eighteenth century, writing Italian concertos with a French accent, French overture featuring moonlighting concerto soloists, and Polish folk tunes that exuberantly dance their way into arias, concertos, sonatas, songs, and suites. One of his more interesting mixtures is the concerto-suite, a subgenre in which a soloist is featured in an opening concerto-allegro and in a following series of French dance movements. The three surviving works of this genre are brought together here for the first time.

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REVIEW:

It’s all top-drawer stuff. Not least thanks to the beautifully blended sound of the whole: crisp strings, mellow woodwind, subtle-but-there harpsichord and theorbo and a gorgeous soft-focus halo of horns. In short, every instrumental timbre is beautifully looked after.

– Gramophone

TELEMANN Suites: in F, TWV 55:F16 ; in A, TWV 55:A7 ; in D, TWV 55:D23 . Concerto in D for Strings, TWV 43:D4 . Fanfare in D, TWV 50:44 . Divertimento in E?, TWV 50:21 • Simon Standage, cond; Collegium Musicum 90 (period instruments) • CHACONNE 0787 (79:18)


It seems like the Telemann fountain is flowing full force nowadays, with a number of recordings appearing like clockwork each month, and I’ve no doubt that the vast number of his compositions are very much in danger of being all recorded, that is, those that haven’t been lost. This disc brings together a selection of instrumental pieces performed by the venerable Simon Standage with the equally venerable and reputable Collegium Musicum 90, which he founded with the late Richard Hickox. Indeed, the Telemann offerings by this ensemble and its director are of such number, variety, and excellence that they were awarded the Telemann prize in 2010, an honor that shows their stature in this massive revival.


This disc does not disappoint, either, although only one of the six works presented is given its world premiere. This is the Divertimento in E?, which seems in every other way little more than a conventional suite of French dances but contains a rather nice dramatic element in the movement titles that offer something more than expected. It would seem that for someone who wrote such a tremendous amount of music, one would have scads of autographs all about, but in Telemann’s case, oddly enough, these seem to be a rarity. As few as 18 of the instrumental works exist in his own hand, nine of which are actually in a single collection written for and dedicated to the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, Ludwig VIII. This disc takes three of these works, written when the composer was 86 years old in 1766, opera ultima if ever there were. The remaining three are earlier, probably closer to 1708 or so when he was Kapellmeister at Sorau in Silesia, now Poland. It is no matter, for the thread that links them is that all are in the French style, dances that alternate fast and slow in the manner of the suite. Only in the Overture-Suite in A Major (titled Concert en Ouverture ) is there a hint of a soloist, in this case a vehicle for violinist Standage to shine. More interestingly, however, is that three of the works from late in the composer’s life include a pair of horns, as well as flutes, coming close to the standard Classical-period orchestra.


Since most have been recorded before, only a few words will suffice about the works themselves. The F-Major suite is very Handelian, with exaggerated French dotted rhythms at the opening, but the harmonies momentarily veer off into strange areas, one of Telemann’s trademarks, as is the outdoorsy feel of the Allegro section with its hunting calls. In the Bourrée that follows, the horns begin this dance in their high register, adding tonal punch to the line, but in the second part, the folk-song character in the decisive rhythms makes a nice complement. The final movement is titled “The Tempest,” and the skirling strings and echoing horns entrances, not to mention a nice crescendo at the beginning of each section, is quite dramatic. In the concerto grosso, I find the opening Andante amusing, almost like Telemann is teaching his ensemble exercises, but his penchant for folk rhythms reasserts itself in the Vivace that follows. One might also note the perpetual-motion finale of the A-Major suite, with its maniacal Gigue and final unexpected cadential flourish. The Divertimento is a perfect little gem, almost a dramatic and very civilized scene that begins with a quick awakening, a mincing gavotte that evokes a conversation at the table, and a brief hunt. Here we are more in the world of early Classicism than the rather more Baroque style of the remainder of the works on the disc.


About the performances themselves, Collegium Musicum 90 is up to its usual standard of excellence. The interpretation is finely nuanced, the attention to dynamic and rhythmic contrast clear, and the intonation spot-on. This rapport is clearly something that Standage and his group have achieved over the years, and this disc only adds to an already world-class reputation. I find some nice surprises, such as the rather prominent horns in the opening movement of the F-Major overture, which I suspect may have been playing bells-up in order to achieve the bucolic sound, very different from the more refined work elsewhere. The flutes are equally clear in their performances. All around, this disc can be highly recommended, even if you have most of the works on other recordings. I would make this one your standard.


FANFARE: Bertil van Boer

Includes suite(s) for rec by Georg Philipp Telemann. Ensemble: Cologne Chamber Orchestra. Conductor: Helmut Müller-Brühl. Soloist: Daniel Rothert.

REVIEW:

Baroque chamber performers face the challenge of picking a program that makes sense from among the enormous body of small-ensemble music by Georg Philipp Telemann, and the multinational historical-instrument ensemble Rebel (pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable) surmounts this challenge. Telemann, like other composers of the first half of the 18th century, wrote lots of trio sonatas, but he also pursued the richer sonata à quattro and sonata à cinque. These are, in the main, flashier and more experimental pieces than the trio sonatas, and Rebel captures their daring qualities. Most of the movements are Italianate, but annotator John Moran (his notes are in English only) rightly points to the influence of Polish folk fiddling on Telemann's music here. Consider the Sonata Discortato à 4 in A major, TWV 43:A7 (tracks 5-8). "Discortato" means "untuned," and Telemann is thought to have derived the scordatura tuning here from Polish music he heard. The final movement is not a Polish dance but a French one, a bourrée, and it is miles away from Bach's treatments of this form; with its drones and plain melodic figures it sounds almost like a reproduction of an actual folk dance. This rustic style (explored in more detail on another Rebel disc devoted specifically to Telemann's Polish side) is balanced by flamboyant Italian sonata movements with pairs of violins and violas sounding off against each other in many combinations. It's a great deal of fun. Rebel here records in the U.S., in a church in Stamford, CT, that brings disagreeably live results, but this remains a colorful program that the Telemann aficionado will enjoy.

-- James Manheim, All Music Guide

With 3600 listed works in all known genres credited to his name, Telemann was one of the most prolific composers of his time. He was famous for his extremely fluid compositional technique; but his stable health also enabled him to work for nearly 75 years without any major interruptions. Interestingly, Handel’s music was spared a major downfall in its posthumous acceptance. And while Johann Sebastian Bach’s works were only properly discovered in the course of the changing ideals of cultural history in the nineteenth century, Telemann’s works were regarded with increasing criticism, occasionally even with contempt. Systematic research into his contribution to music history did not begin until the second half of the twentieth century. Owing to the huge volume, there is no end in sight.

Johann Joachim Quantz, in his handbook for transverse flute written in 1752, wrote of the composer Georg Philipp Telemann: “I wish to especially recommend Telemann’s trios written in the French style, many of which he had already fashioned thirty or more years ago.” Georg Philipp Telemann not only gained the admiration of Quantz, but his pieces are still frequently performed and recorded today. For this album, his Concerto di camera in G minor, Double Concertos in A minor and E minor, and Suite in A minor have been recorded. Performing these timeless works are three outstanding period instrumentalists, Bolette Roed, Reiko Ichise, and Alexis Kossenko.

Telemann: Recorder Suite in A minor - Viola Concerto - Tafel

Ensemble Nevermind made a good impression via the Alpha Classics label with their Conversations album, and this Telemann programme also surpasses expectations for range and sheer variety of musical content, showing how canny 18th century masters were in making the most out of small chamber ensembles.

Telemann’s influence as a composer spread throughout Europe in the first half of the 18th century in no small part due to distribution of his chamber music from his own publishing house. This quality of this work reached the attention of flautist and composer Michael Blavet, and an invitation went out to Germany for Telemann to join in the salons and Concerts Spirituel that represented the height of musical fashion in the French capital at the time.

The quartet format heard in this stylish recording might well have been cooked up between Blavet and Telemann, but whatever its origins the combination of flute, violin, viola da gamba or cello and harpsichord ticks all the boxes for contrast of timbre and flexibility when it comes to applying pretty much any compositional technique of the period. Concerto movements can be found, as in the Prélude to the Quatuor no. 4, variations appear in Quatuor no. 6, which opens with a French overture, and dance forms of various kinds that are disguised under French expression markings such as Coulant or tempo indications such as Vite.

Pieces intended for the consumption of elite concertgoers might be expected to be somewhat superficial, and while there is goodly entertainment to be had throughout, there are plenty of movements and passages which affect the emotions more strikingly that you might have anticipated. The solemn ecclesiastical origins of the Fuguette that opens this programme makes it a case in point, and while all too brief the fourth movement Largo from the Concerto No. 1 can compete with Telemann’s contemporary, J.S. Bach. Contrast is all, and hardly anything here lingers beyond a five minute duration. More substantial movements, such as the Prélude to Quatuor No. 6, have their contrasting sections, with improvisatory playing adding spice to slower tempi, and little rhythmic tricks adding spice to the faster sections, played with improvisatory flair by Nevermind’s expert musicians.

Recorded closely but with an excellent refinement of balance that blends the harpsichord with the other instruments, this is a production for long-term delight. The Sonate in F major TWV 43:F1 may be a world premiere recording, the present version being one adapted from an original scored for four strings and continuo. Documentation about the instruments played is included in the booklet, and all sound very nice indeed, the transverse flute played with sweet nuance by Anna Besson, who interestingly swaps for a piccolo in the Vite of Quatuor No. 4. For Telemann fans and those intrigued by what happens when German baroque meets French fashion, this is a must.

– MusicWeb International (Dominy Clements)