Darmstadt

Telemann's connection with Darmstadt is typical of a composer who cast his net widely on the path to becoming Germany's most acclaimed composer. Appointed to his Frankfurt post in 1712 Telemann was shrewd enough to realize that to 'get on' he needed to write music for the best. In instrumental terms, he was lucky enough to be based less than 20 miles from the Darmstadt court of Ernst Ludwig VII, a music-loving nobleman who had at his disposal a fine orchestra of musicians, many recruited from Paris, trained by the court Kapellmeister, Johann Christoph Graupner (known largely through his turning down the cantorate at St Thomas's Leipzig before Bach was reluctantly found to be an acceptable choice).

This album features 7 works for harpsichord, 6 of which are taken from the "Darmstadt Harpsichord Book" (DHB) housed in the university and municipal library ("Universitats- und Landesbibliothek") of the same city, with 5 of those works by Handel, and the 6th by Christoph Graupner. The harpsichordist on this recording, Genevieve Soly, is a scholar on the DHB and on the music of Graupner. She also contributed the liner notes on this recording, and wears her learning lightly there. She also plays well in all the works.