The grand gestures of Telemann

Georg Philipp Telemann: The Grand Concertos for Mixed Instruments

I don't think there's a composer who has moved up more in my estimation in the past decade than Georg Philipp Telemann. The great CPO series from Michael Schneider and La Stagione Frankfurt has been a major factor in this process. Like Bach, Telemann is a great synthesizer of pan-European styles; besides the French and the Italians, Swedes, Germans and Danes, amongst others, show up in his various orchestral, chamber music and concerted works. He's also a master of the grand gesture, very much like his close friend Handel. The "grand concertos" in this collection are superb examples of a master completely secure in his abilities, extending his brand through a complete re-shuffling of instrumentation.

Telemann was only able to present the concertos that sprang from his apparently unlimited imagination because he had access to superb instrumentalists. And that goes for the musicians of La Stagione Frankfurt, in spades. This music seems effortless - it sort of floats through the speakers - but on listening closely, you realize how difficult are the virtuoso lines and the questions of tempo, balance and intonation. Michael Schneider has perfectly judged the style of this music, allowing the music to shine. This is completely secular music, but these performances bring out an almost religious, or at least spiritual, feeling.


This album will be released on September 6, 2019

From intimate to cinematic, in the composer's authentic voice

C. P. E. Bach: Sacred Choral Music

Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach was not an actual time traveler, though you might think so when you hear music from this 5-CD set that provides music sounding as if it came from different times in the 18th century. Capriccio has put together recordings going back to the mid-1980s from Hermann Max's Rheinische Kantorei and Das Kleine Konzert, filled in with a 2002 recording of the Magnificat by Michael Schneider's Dresdner Kammerchor and La Stagione Frankfurt. Here are the works included:

When I began listening to this music I admit to wondering how much of a slog it might be. Instead it was a case of one felicitous movement after another; not every bit, to be sure, but CPE was hitting at a pretty high rate! Not all this music has the energy and forward movement of the famous Gloria from the Magnificat, but the composer is often nearly as much a master of the intimate aria and the erudite fugue as his father. The Magnificat itself was written in 1749, early enough for Johann Sebastian to hear it before he died the next year. There are striking similarities with the work J.S. Bach wrote 25 years earlier, but sections sounding more like Mozart and Haydn as well. This isn't surprising considering that CPE tinkered with this work until the 1786, just before his death.

The best work here, I think, is Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu (The Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus), written in 1777/78. Though there are echoes of both JS Bach, Telemann and Handel, not to mention much that was reminiscent of Haydn, after three discs of his sacred music I was beginning to get a feel for CPE's authentic voice. There's an intimate feeling to so much of his sacred vocal music, but here he's added much more drama. Jeremy Grimshaw talks about CPE Bach's "almost cinematic shifts of mood", though perhaps this is in the more measured style of Paul Thomas Anderson rather than the more obvious Steven Spielberg.

Though no longer at the cutting edge of Historically Informed Performance, these recordings have the more relaxed sound of musicians at ease with their period instruments and singing practice. This is stylishly played and sung, well captured by the WDR engineers, and the entire package is very much recommended. I'll end with praise for the cover design, which features this marvellous photograph of nuns in Rome, by alfonstr (Fotalia).

This disc will be released on April 6, 2018.

A fun hour of pleasant music

Way back in 1998 Michael Schneider and La Stagione Frankfurt recorded Carl Friedrich Abel's op. 10 Symphonies of 1771 for CPO, and now they're back for more, with the 1769 Op. 7 set, due to be released on April 7, 2017. The op. 10 symphonies are the epitome of the galant style, with infectious rhythms and pleasing surprises; you get more of the same with op. 7. The real difference is that everyone's understanding of what Historically Informed Performance means for mid- to late-18th century music has evolved in the past couple of decades. There's a new freedom here, a freshness and energy that wasn't there to the same degree in the past. Sure, there's more than a bit of the generic about this music, but it's a sound I happen to like. Themes and passages have a way of repeating, perhaps more so in op. 7 than in the more personal and individualized symphonies of op. 10. But this is a fun hour of pleasant music.