Gambist

Elephant House Quartet invites the listener for a stroll through the colourful oeuvre of Telemann — himself a gardening enthusiast — presenting a bouquet of chamber-musical jewels. Telemann’s Garden ranges from excerpts of solo fantasias for violin, flute and harpsichord to a sonata for viola da gamba and basso continuo, a trio sonata for violin, recorder and basso continuo, a suite for violin, flute and basso continuo, as well as one of the quartets Telemann wrote during his Paris sojourns. These pieces together constitute a fascinating portrait of one of the most prolific and successful composers of the Baroque era.

It is a constant source of amazement that to this very day, musical gems even by famous composers often fail to receive the exposure they deserve or have even - despite modern digital access - been unjustly consigned to oblivion. The four works by Carl Friedrich Abel presented here are just such treasures, and two of them - the Sinfonie Concertanti WKO 42 and 43 - are released on record for the very first time to mark the composer's tercentenary in 2023. The reason for this is surely that Abel's activity and fame as a gambist and as a composer for his instrument has obscured the fact that he wrote these four important concertante works for the violoncello. The present recording seeks to help restore the reputation that these works deserve.

With this first volume, Les Voix Humaines members Margaret Little and Susie Napper embark on a very ambitious cycle to record all of Sainte Colombe the Elder's 67 "Concerts a deux violes esgales" (concerts for two bass viols). On evidence of the first 18 offered here, the interpretations are consistently quicker and noticeably sunnier compared to the few other recordings of several of these pieces.

The cello was a beneficiary of the remarkable flowering of high culture sponsored by both ecclesiastical and aristocratic patrons in early 18th-century Naples. In 1717, Rocco Greco (1650-1718) became the last appointed player of the viola da gamba in the Royal Chapel dedicated to the treasure of St Januarius, the patron saint of Naples. Both Greco and his colleague Gaetano Francone (c.1650-1717) produced new music for the cello which was suitable for performance within the liturgy of the chapel.

This plunge into the steady stream of Biber releases comes from violinist Anton Steck, an alumnus of the Musica Antiqua Köln period-instrument group. Austria's Heinrich Ignaz von Biber was a brilliant, iconoclastic violinist and composer of the late seventeenth century, hardly known 25 years ago but now the recipient of attention from violinists and casual listeners alike. His Mystery Sonatas collectively depict the Passion story through the unique device of scordatura, or retuning of the violin, which forces the instrument into strange, unearthly textures and moods.

As one of the major early music groups founded by virtuoso gambist and conductor Jordi Savall, Le Concert des Nations has served effectively as his orchestra since 1989 in repertoire ranging from the 17th to the 19th century, covering music of the Baroque and Classical periods on original instruments.