Telemann: Complete Violin Concertos Vol. 3

The Wallfisch Band, Wallfisch, Elizabeth

CPO 777 473-2

The baroque era was at least as inventive as later epochs in the mixture of genres. Thus, the title of this nascent total of Georg Friedrich Telemann's "violin concertos" is misleading: they are not really solo concertos, as the formal arrangement of the first two works presented here as French overtures with a three-part opening movement in the slow-fast pattern. indicating slow and subsequent dances. Rather, Telemann has - and incidentally in different ways - integrated sweeping passages for the solo violin into the individual movements.However, the complex assignment difficulties that once again help baroque production escape any scheming interest play no part in the enjoyment of this carefully designed record. Similarly fresh, imaginative and entirely non-schematic as Telemann composed, "The Wallfisch Band" also performs the interpretations under her conductor and solo violinist Elizabeth Wallfisch. The egalitarian drudgery of some early music ensembles has no chance: neither are the tempos clichély fast - there are also once phrases pleasantly restrained, such as minuet and sarabande from the Concerto in D major TWV 55: D 14 - still is the phrasing consistently brisk. Elizabeth Wallfisch puts on her solo passages soothingly pragmatic, does not try • And again and again surprise pretty little gimmicks, such as the ravishingly sharpened top notes in the Caprice of the D major Concerto, a long-lasting, almost dreamy-seeming harpsichord chord at the end of the first movement or a grumpy, harsh beaming unison in the Invention III of the "Concert en Ouverture" in A major TWV 55: A 7, which almost seems to point to Haydn. Amusing Baroque! • Dr. Michael B. Weiß [06.08.2010]

CD x 1

CPO

6/24/10

761203747320