Hyperion Records

Telemann never travelled to Italy but, in much the same way as Bach, acquired his knowledge of Italian music through manuscripts circulating German courts and from visiting Italian musicians. Few concertos of Telemann so wholeheartedly embrace the sonorities and techniques of the late Italian Baroque as this concerto which is preserved in a manuscript in the Hessian State Library at Darmstadt. Its form is that of the chamber concerto where each part, other than the continuo, is obbligato.

In the case of the present work Telemann achieves effective sonorities through his informed writing for three tonally contrasting solo instruments: treble recorder, oboe and violin. Such exploitation of tonal colour was a feature of Italian Baroque music and of Venetian music in particular, and a close analogy exists between this concerto and the many examples of Vivaldi’s chamber concertos for mixed obbligato instrumental ensemble. Telemann, unlike Vivaldi, however, remains faithful to the four-movement layout of the ‘sonata da chiesa’.

The opening Adagio is characterised by a gently undulating motif introduced by the oboe and taken up first by the violin, and lastly by the recorder. The textures preserve a delicate transparency throughout. The following Allegro is fugal with episodes of vigorous passagework both in the solo and continuo parts. In the Adagio third movement (C major), Telemann achieves a notably tender means of expression both through delicately contrived sonorities and an affecting interweaving of parts.

The Vivace finale is the most extended of the movements and, perhaps, the most Italian. Its rhythmic energy and unison tutti figures call Vivaldi to mind, as indeed do the frequent episodes of virtuoso passagework for the three soloists. Distinction between ‘solo’ and ‘ripieno’ is more marked here than in the previous Allegro, each player being given clearly defined solo episodes. In the last of these, for violin, Telemann takes Italianate string figurations to heart in a dazzling display of arpeggio sequences outdistancing in length, for instance, almost any comparable example by Vivaldi. A full recapitulation of the ritornello brings this fine work to a conclusion.

from notes by Nicholas Anderson © 2002