Moxart Wind Concertos Marriner

Germany's CPO label has presented the efforts of performers who have doggedly unearthed unknown music of various periods, especially the eighteenth century. With the voluminous corpus of concertos by Telemann, many of which exist only in manuscript, they enter a field with a lot of still-uncharted territory. This set of wind concertos is one of the label's most useful releases despite a few quirks. The music offers a good quick overview of the various influences at work in Telemann's concertos, which began with the seventeenth century concerto structure of a sequence of short elements resembling rhetorical figures but overlaid them with Italian and (especially) French influences. There are hints of Handel, Couperin, Corelli, Bach, and other composers, but there is a lightness and enthusiasm throughout that is entirely Telemann's own. (James Manheim)

The first sound heard in the Concerto for Two Clarinets & Orchestra by Antonio Cartellieri (1772-1807) is a loud timpani roll that you could mistake for the opening of a Haydn symphony. This striking effect sets the stage for a Haydnesque allegro with Beethovenian accents, quite different from the wind concertos of Mozart and his contemporaries. But then Cartellieri had a reputation as an innovator (at a time in Europe when performers and the general public were suspicious of innovations) who made use of the latest advances in clarinet technology for his concertos. The solo writing is highly virtuosic (though the two clarinets often play in unison, or in thirds) and its challenges are fully met by Dieter Klöcker and Sandra Arnold.

Johann David Heinichen - Dresden Wind Concertos
Fiori Musicali / Thomas Albert
EAC+LOG+CUE | WV: 272 MB | Full Artwork: 62 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: CPO # 999 637-2 | Country/Year: Germany 1998
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque

"A few years ago, the name of Johann David Heinichen came out of the blue as a wonderful surprise. Baroque music lovers around the world were amazed to discover an obscure composer who, in his best works, was second to none–easily comparable to Vivaldi in terms of originality, rhythmic exuberance, and boundless imagination. (…) The Fiori Musicali ensemble, on period instruments, plays with enthusiasm and poetic commitment. The virtuosity may not be as extreme as that of Concerto Köln, but each performance reaches a perfect balance between expressive ardor and precision–a quality mirrored by the accurate and natural sonics of the Radio Bremen engineers." ~classicstoday

It would be hard to find more appealing treatments of Mozart's wind concertos than these from Christopher Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music, featuring a distinguished group of period-instrument soloists. Leading the way, and playing a deliciously mellow-sounding basset clarinet, Anthony Pay gives a splendid account of what is surely Mozart's most beautiful concerto, the Clarinet Concerto in A, K. 622. Pay's shadings are soft and natural, his embellishments simply marvelous, and he and Hogwood are right on the mark when it comes to tempo, expression, and accent.

Telemann wrote wind concertos for up to four solo instruments. A majority of the concertos (including all but one on this recording) are in four movements, usually slow-fast-slow-fast format, though there are many in the Italian three-movement style of fast-slow-fast.

Johann Friedrich Fasch was a contemporary of Johann Sebastian Bach, and that has seriously hampered the interest in his music. It was the German musicologist Hugo Riemann, who at the beginning of the 20th century made an attempt to restore his reputation.

This is a very fine set of Mozart's "complete" wind concertos, though Deutsche Grammophon does not make that claim, to their credit. The Flute Concerto #2 is not here, though that work is simply a lazy reworking of the Oboe Concerto. Some fragments for horn are also missing, though we get the Andante for Flute. The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra plays very well throughout, with instrumentals carefully and beautifully balanced.

The varied forces of Georg Philipp Telemann's instrumental music require a flexible ensemble to give a sense of the music's range. In this case, two German historical-instrument ensembles, La Stagione Frankfurt and the veteran Camerata Köln, join forces for a set of concertos with a delightfully varied set of soloists. This music has the odd combination of lightness and unorthodoxy that tends to either attract or repel those who listen to Telemann. The concertos, in three or four Italianate movements, are among his most progressive works, none more so than the Concerto in D major for two horns, strings, and continuo, TWV 52:D1, where the continuity of Baroque texture breaks up entirely: at one point the horns seem to inhabit their own stately sphere as the strings pause to let them pass. But each of the concertos has moments as unusual, if not quite as dramatic. (James Manheim)