Telemann Viola

The Father, the Son and the Godfather is a snapshot of a time when composers were offered a tremendous freedom in their choices of genres and styles and features three composers who knew each other well: J.S. Bach (the father), C.P.E. Bach (the son) and Georg Philipp Telemann (CPE’s godfather). We thus get Johann Sebastian’s rigorous, intellectually demanding Sonata in B minor, ample examples of the elegant and tender Empfindsamer Stil of his son C.P.E., and in two Trio Sonatas a taste of Telemann’s ‘world music’.

A true spate of recordings in recent years has illuminated the best qualities of Georg Philipp Telemann's chamber music, which is instrumentally colorful, adept in its combination of styles, and often possessed of sheer imagination and a delightfully cheeky sense of humor. For a great example of the kind of thing Telemann does all the time that Bach would rarely if ever do, hear the Entrée from the Ouverture for oboe d'amore, two violins, viola, and continuo in E major, TWV 55:E2 (track 6), where the music unexpectedly shifts into triple meter and back again.

This 29CD set provides a superb introduction to this master of the Barock. He is often suffers in comparison to Bach, Handel and Vivaldi mainly because it is so difficult to know where to start with such a vast body of work. This Brilliant Classics box set makes the Telemann experience all the more enjoyable by making this selection and providing a wonderful window into the world of this great composer.