Ouverture Burlesque

Five lesser-known pieces (one orchestral suite and four instrumental concertos) from the over-abundant pen of Georg Philipp Telemann are presented in this second collection by the British ensemble Collegium Musicum 90, here directed by its co-founder, gifted violinist Simon Standage, whose earlier recordings with the English Concert and the Academy of Ancient Music are the guarantors of his classiness.

Born in 1681, Georg Philip Telemann would inevitably suffer from comparisons with one of the towering figures of western Classical music, born just four years later: Johann Sebastian Bach. Although after his death Telemann may have been constantly cast into the Leipzig composers shadow, during his lifetime he was exalted as Bachs equal and was considered one of the greatest German composers of the early 18th century. Certainly, the size of his output compares very favourably with Bachs; Telemann was also a highly productive composer, writing over 3,000 works during his lifetime (although not all have survived). Despite his popularity falling away in the 19th century, today Telemann is almost as highly regarded as he was in his own lifetime ¬ the large number of new recordings on this edition pays tribute to the flurry of interest that has grown around the composer Telemann over the past 30 years.

Telemann is never more irresistible than when he's in light-hearted pictorial mode, and both these new releases feature one of the most entertainingly evocative of all his overture-suites for strings, the Burlesque de Quixote. Taking episodes from the Cervantes novel as its inspiration, it provides us with a memorable sequence of cameos, from the deluded Don tilting at windmills and sighing with love, to Sancho Panza tossed high in a blanket, to portrayals of the pair's respective steeds.

A precursor in this field as in so many others, Telemann gave the viola its very first masterpieces, immediately establishing it as a solo instrument in its own right. Alongside Sabine Fehlandt and the musicians of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Antoine Tamestit pays splendid tribute to this pioneering music, which blends melodic charm and contrapuntal rigour into an organic whole.

Hamburg, 1734. The most extravagant of harpsichord builders, Hieronÿmus Albrecht Hass, created an instrument whose sonority was inspired by the variety and amplitude of the organ. Here, on a copy of this unique harpsichord, Andreas Staier plays pieces by the finest composers who were attracted to the Hanseatic city: a riot of colours!

The Augustinus Muziekcentrum in Antwerp is a deconsecrated church repurposed for concerts, especially in the field of early music. The venue may work well for some pieces, but it's bothersome in this program of comic vocal and instrumental music by Telemann, where it's completely inappropriate. The two comic cantatas here presuppose an intimate environment of connoisseurs, but the voice of soprano soloist Dorothee Mields gets lots in the church's vast spaces to such an extent that text intelligibility is a problem, even with the aid of printed texts in German, Dutch, French, and English./quote]