Gottfried

Gottfried von der Goltz, first violin and conductor of the first-rate Freiburger Barockorchester comes back with a new album dedicated to the violin sonatas of a young - and already brilliant - Telemann. Rarely recorded, these works show a very surprising form as they allow the musician total freedom of expression and ornamentation. These features demonstrate also the unique creative inventiveness already in germ in Telemann’s music.

Founded by the late, great conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt in 1953, Concentus Musicus Wien was one of the very first period-instrument orchestras, its recordings of baroque and classical masterworks setting benchmarks for their sheer energy and spirit. Today, the orchestra continues that powerful legacy under the baton of Austrian conductor Stefan Gottfried, whose ingenious programme here invites us to make musical links between Schubert and the earlier Haydn. On the surface, Schubert’s youthful Symphony No. 5, completed in 1816, owes a clear debt to Beethoven. But listen to Haydn’s sophisticated Symphony No. 99, the first of his second series of “London symphonies”, and you can hear that same charm and boisterous exuberance shining through in Schubert’s later work. The performances, captured live at Vienna’s famous Musikverein, are a pure joy.