Telemann: Trios pour le Dessus de Viole

Eckert, Simone, Hamburger Ratsmusik

CPO 777 968-2

»And how would it be possible for me to remember everything that I have invented for string and wind playing? Here I particularly concentrated on trio production and organized it so that the second part seemed to be the first, and the bass in natural melody, and in a harmony coming close to them, that is, their every tone, went along, and could not be otherwise. People also wanted to flatter me by saying that I herein had shown my best strength.« This is how Georg Philipp Telemann was quoted in Johann Mattheson's Grundlagen einer Ehren-Pforte in 1739. Along with this there was the fact that he very much liked to employ unusual instrumentations with all the instruments of his time available to him. The nine extant sonatas for »Dessy de Viole, « the dessus de viole or treble gamba, stand out in this group of works. This recording represents the first complete documentation of these trio sonatas with the oboe and recorder in supporting roles – works about which Telemann experts and current scholarship continue to maintain their silence. Unfortunately, no autographs are extant. The manuscripts from the 1720s are in the holdings of the Hessian State Library in Darmstadt and are copies by the Darmstadt chapel master Christoph Graupner or his associates, whose copies he then in part with ordering hand supplied at least with a title line. Plenty of esprit and humor – just like Telemann!

CD x 1

CPO

6/3/16

761203796823