Authenticity!!!
Giordano Bruno | Wherever I am, I am. | 10/10/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Absolutely! This is what Telemann himself heard in Frankfurt in the second and third decade of the 18th Century... What? How can you be so sure? ... I was there. Now don't ask again.
Okay, okay, let's be modest, GB! This is a masterful example of what I consider the most historically authentic performance style for music of the High Baroque, played on period instruments at original pitch, with tempi and articulations based on the most thorough study of historical sources. And played very well! None of this nonsense about intractable old instruments and second-rate players! There is not an orchestra or chamber ensemble in the world today, using 20th C instruments, that plays more professionally or proficiently that the "Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin" that you'll hear on this CD. 'Nuff said!
The four suites recorded here were all probably composed before 1732, the year Haydn was born. There could hardly be a better demonstration of the originality and daring of George Philipp Telemann (1681-1767). Of all the German baroque composers, it was Telemann who understood and employed the refined French manner and taste in his instrumental music, while maintaining all of his German earnest intellectuality in his sacred cantatas. In these suites, however, Telemann took French jocularity several steps farther and wrote genuinely outrageous satirical music. His Ouverture "La Bizarre" thumbs its broad German nose at all the conventions of the French style. The Concerto for Strings "Les Rainettes" (The Frogs) is in effect a 'musical joke' - decades before Mozart's famous piece with that name - in which the violins croak "ah-ah-ah' on open A strings. The Ouverture "Les Nations" is 'table music' at its most entertaining. Telemann had no means of knowing what genuine Portuguese or Moscovite folk music sounded like; his music simply attempts to suggest the stereotypical perceptions of the 'personality' of those peoples. "Les Moscovites" is the most amusing to my ears, with its heavy tolling bell imitations; Telemann beat Moussorgsky to the bells by several centuries.
It takes technical skill and self-confidence to play such deliberately outrageous music in public. The danger is that it will be heard as 'wrong' rather than humorous. The AfAMB succeeds marvelously, simply because they surround the goofy notes with spot-perfect ensemble playing in the 'straight' passages. And often such light-hearted music is only good for one listening, rather than something you'll enjoy again and again. I assure you, this is NOT so with the four suites recorded here. There are compositional depths in Telemann's musical fooleries, and the performance is so suave, so polished, so authentic that this CD will never gather dust on a back shelf of your collection."
Track Listings (26) - Disc #1