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| George Philipp Telemann: Don Quixote, Concertos & Suites by Telemann; Apollo's Fire/Jeannette Sorrell. (album cover) |
St. Paul, Minn. — Sometimes when I take myself a little too seriously, I look for ways to help keep things in perspective. This new recording of concertos and suites by Georg Philip Telemann fits the bill perfectly. Jeannette Sorrell and Apollo's Fire bring Telemann's light-hearted nature to the surface with the help of medieval knights, a harlequin, and a family of crickets.
Telemann was filled with a sense of enthusiasm that infected everybody around him.
He was 21 when he was appointed director of the Leipzig Opera, and that same year he started Collegium Musicum, an orchestra made up mostly of his law-student friends. From that point on, Telemann was on a roll.
It wasn't long before he won the coveted post of Director of Music for the wealthy city of Hamburg. Even though he had a demanding job, Telemann had a light, humorous outlook on life, and the music on this recording proves it.
I was immediately drawn to the Grillen-Symphonie. Grillen means "crickets, but in the 18th century it also meant, "whims." It was Telemann's title, Whimsical Symphony, that first caught my eye, and then the animated music caught my ear. I think Telemann did toss a few crickets into this symphony, because it sure sounds like it! The first movement opens with piccolo and contrabasses, as if the smallest and the largest of the cricket family are singing their way through a beautiful summer day, gathering food for the long winter ahead. The overall mood is happy and carefree.
The use of contrabasses in a soloist role is also pretty whimsical, if only because it's so rare. After the pirouetting crickets finish their ballet in the second movement, Telemann whips up a rowdy party complete with Polish dancing in the finale. Early in his career, Telemann spent three years at the court of a Polish Count, so he was well acquainted with their musical traditions.
The Burlesque Overture recreates the imagery of a 16th-century Italian comedy with stock characters like the Harlequin, who is lazy and clown-like, yet very clever. With his huge hat and short cape, the musician and dancer Mezzetino is depicted in the final movement.
Here, conductor and harpsichordist Jeanette Sorrell helps him out with some middle-eastern accents and a bit of paper in the harpsichord. Eighteenth-century musicians weren't above clever tricks like this one. Whenever a score called for something that sounded Turkish, the paper was inserted into the instrument and would cause it to buzz.
It was really unusual in Telemann's day for the flute and recorder to be used together in the same piece. This recording features one of those rare examples. Since they represent similar but different instrument families, the flute and recorder were usually kept apart, but Telemann puts his imagination to work to demonstrate how effectively they work together.
In a way, it's like two opera divas battling it out, but in the end they discover they can make beautiful music together.
In the final movement, Apollo's Fire adds a few of their own touches to highlight the peasant-like droning in the bass, and then they roar into an explosive percussive ending.
The recording closes out with the adventures of Don Quixote in a suite inspired by Cervantes' 1605 novel. In preparing for this recording, conductor Jeannette Sorrell discovered that a complete published edition of this suite doesn't exist. In order to perform it the way Telemann intended, they had to track down copies of the manuscript parts from the University Library in Darmstadt, Germany.
The Cleveland baroque orchestra, Apollo's Fire takes its name from the classical god of music, sun, and poetry. They're high- energy performances are inventive and downright fun. I think they're a perfect match for Telemann's fanciful concertos and suites featured on this new recording.
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