Telemann Letzte Orchesterwerke Michael Schneider

1716 veröffentlichte Telemann Die Kleine Kammermusik, eine Sammlung von sechs Partiten für Melodieinstrument und Generalbaß. Was an Einfallsreichtum und Individualität in diesen auch für Laien gedachten Stücken steckt, haben Michael Schneider und seine Camerata Köln bereits vor acht Jahren mit dezenter Leidenschaft und profunder Stilkompetenz demonstriert (cpo CD 999 497-2). Nun stellt Schneider mit La Stagione Frankfurt eine Orchesterfassung dieser Musik vor, die Telemann Mitte der 1720er Jahre erstellt hat. Die Ober- und die Unterstimme sind dabei im wesentlichen unverändert, die beiden Mittelstimmen hinzukomponiert worden.

How admirably Telemann succeeds may be heard listening to these concertos. Eschewing the Italian three-movement model of fast-slow-fast, he adheres to the German layout of four movements: slow-fast-slow-fast. Also in contrast to the works of his Italian counterparts, who not infrequently fell into the lazy habit of writing the same concerto over and over again, each of Telemann’s examples is strikingly different, not just in its instrumentation, but in its melodic and harmonic content and in the patterning of its passagework. Nonetheless, exquisitely beautiful as some of his slow movements are—listen to the Largo of the A-Major Oboe d’amore Concerto—it would be disingenuous to pretend that Telemann (or German Baroque composers in general) ever mastered the art of the Italian instrumental cantilena that grew out of the melodiousness of the language and Italy’s long vocal tradition. Nothing in these concertos can compare, for example, to the timeless beauty of the Adagio from Albinoni’s D-Minor Oboe Concerto, op. 9/2, written at approximately the same time as the Telemann.

Telemann's comic opera Den neumodische Liebhaber Damon was first performed at Leipzig in 1719, two years before he took up his position as Music Director at Hamburg. But in 1724 Hamburg's newly refurbished Gänsemarkt Opera House needed a new piece for its reopening; Telemann, who had taken over the running of the Gänsemarkt theater from Keiser in the previous year, revised his Leipzig opera for the occasion, its first Hamburg performance taking place on August 30th, 1724… - -NA, Gramophone

Around the middle of it 18th century began a basic stylistic A radical change in the history of music: the Baroque took its farewell and classical music made its entrance. Georg Philipp Telemann was one of the first to perceive and enthusiastically take up the new, fresh wind. At an age at which others have long since retired, a second creative spring almost began for him: the German Singspiel had just been launched by composers of the young generation, such as Hiller and Dittersdorf, the 80-year-old Telemann sits down with a 20-year-old librettist and sets the story of "Don Quixote at the Marriage of Comacho" to music full of wit and grace.

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)

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.

Georg Philipp Telemann - cpo friends have long known - is always good for surprises. He was a diligent and also important opera composer who wrote about 35 operas for the Hamburg Opera between 1721 and 1733, of which unfortunately only nine have survived. These are, without exception, important contributions to German opera history; recent performances have all proved their viability and power, but above all the originality, the music-dramatic sense and the always attractive melody of Telemann revealed.

Telemann wrote funeral compositions for many persons. His setting of the Funeral Music for Emperor Charles VII – transmitted solely in the form of a sketch in the composer’s own hand with numerous corrections and writing simplifications and in part without a text – already points to typical features of his late vocal work: a treatment of the vocal parts that is melodically sometimes austere, mostly coloratura-poor, and systematic in its employment of verbal meter, a melodic design sharpened by succinct rhythms and suspensions, and a harmonic structure enriched by pointedly set interdominants. This funerary music is set in the context of the state compositions ordered by the Hamburg city council for the elections, coronations, weddings, and deaths of Holy Roman Emperors of the German Nation.

Telemann wrote instrumental concertos for all the wind instruments of his epoch – for example, for oboe and oboe d’amore and for transverse flute, recorder, and flauto pastorale. Since he could play most of these instruments, he wrote extremely idiomatic parts showing each instrument in a favourable light and simultaneously appealing to the instrumentalist. The concertos exhibit a wealth of varied (and often unusual) ensemble formations, concerto practices and forms. A one-of-kind cosmos of performance joy and fantasy spreads out in the Italian, French, German, and Polish styles, and it was because of its uniqueness that cpo set out on the adventure of a complete recording of Telemann’s wind concertos with La Stagione and the Camerata Köln.