Fondée en 1988 par un petit groupe d'amis réunis autour du violoniste Philippe Couvert, L'académie Sainte-Cécile est un ensemble instrumental à géométrie variable articulé autour d'un trio (flûtes, vièles, clavicythérium) pour les musiques médiévales, d'une paire de violons et basse (clavecin, violoncelle) pour le répertoire baroque, d'un quatuor à cordes ou trio avec forte-piano pour le classique et romantique. Cet ensemble s'élargit occasionnellement à un effectif semi orchestral, toujours jouant sans chef à l'exemple de ses modèles historiques des XVIIè et XVIIIè siècles.
As mentioned in his autobiographies, Telemann's encounters with Eastern European gypsy music influenced his own compositions. The young composer must have been enthralled by the wonderful inventiveness of this music, as typified in this recording with the last movements of the Caprice Symphony and the Concerto in e minor for recorder and flute.
Telemann published his Sonates sans Basse à deux Flutes traverses, ou à deux Violons, ou à deux Flutes à bec (Sonatas without Bass for Two Transverse Flutes, or Two Violins, or Two Recorders) in Hamburg in 1727 and they were published again in Amsterdam around the year l730 by Le Cène, in Paris in 1736-37 by Le Clerc and in London in 1746 as opera seconda by Walsh. Telemann, in his own autobiographical notice published by Handel's Hamburg rival Mattheson in 1740 in his Grundlage einer Ehren-Pforte, writes of his ability to play the keyboard, violin, recorder, oboe, flute, chalumeau and viola da gamba, as well as the double bass and trombone, skills that at that time were not unique to him.
Born in Milan, Giovanni Antonini studied at the Civica Scuola di Musica and at the Centre de Musique Ancienne in Geneva. He is a founder member of the Baroque ensemble “il Giardino Armonico”, which he has led since 1989. With this ensemble he has appeared as conductor and soloist on the recorder and Baroque transverse flute in Europe, United States, Canada, South America, Australia, Japan and Malaysia. He has performed with many prestigious artists including Cecilia Bartoli, Isabel Faust, Viktoria Mullova, Giuliano Carmignola, Giovanni Sollima, Sol Gabetta, Katia and Marielle Labèque, Kristian Bezuidenhout.
This is yet another addition to the Collegium Musicum 90's superb series of Telemann recordings. Their tone is suitably mellow, much more attuned to the baroque sensibility than any other period instruments orchestra I can think of. The works here are totally engaging. The chalumeau is a predecessor of the clarinet. It makes a woody, somewhat recorder-like sound, and, on this showing, has a limited amount of versatility.
In comparison with their contemporary, Telemann, German composers such as Fasch, Graupner, Heinichen and Stolzel enjoy a dimin ished profile among present-day concert-goers and music enthusiasts. None of them, admittedly, was anything like so prolific as the Hamburg Director Musices but they all had one thing in common - a fascination with woodwind instruments whose role in concertos and suites was imaginatively developed in their hands. Early on in life Fasch took Telemann as a model, on at least one occasion successfully passing off a piece of his own music as that of the elder composer.