Telemann: La Bizarre, Etc

Satire in music: Even in the eighteenth century, Telemann was regarded as the composer who had brought a new light-hearted spirit to German music. This innovation did not always earn him the praise of his compatriots. His suites, full of humour, imagination and impish gaiety, display all the art of a composer who was also capable of writing against the trends of his time. La Bizarre, which gives this programme its tittle, provides an admirable example.

"Telemann at his most light-hearted played with plenty of appropriate energy" --Gramophone Magazine

Not entirely without reason, Georg Philipp Telemann’s reputation today as a “light” composer often has unjustly discouraged would-be listeners from exploring his more challenging, if not extravagant side. And it’s a pity since Telemann, who was recognized in his day as quite the opposite, possessed extraordinary wit, a keen imagination, and a boundless sense of humor–all of which manifested themselves in his vastly prolific oeuvre more often than is generally believed.

My initiation began years ago with an LP recording of Telemann’s Suite for Hunting Horns and Orchestra, a riotous work setting the ensemble Rallye Louvarts de Paris’ dissonant blaring brass against the suave, seamless strings of the Jean-Francois Paillard Chamber Orchestra (briefly available on CD in an Erato collection titled “Telemann in Hambourg”). For the uninitiated, this new Harmonia Mundi offering by the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin appropriately titled “La Bizarre” should do the trick. It’s a wonderfully inspired, intelligently conceived, expertly performed program guaranteed once and for all to put to rest Telemann’s stereotype as a strictly “light” composer.
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