Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767)
Complete Violin Concertos Vol. 9
Julia Huber (violin), Martin Jopp (violin), Lucas Schurig-Breuß (viola), L’Orfeo Barockorchester / Carin van Heerden
rec. 2024, Stiftskirche, Waldhausen, Austria
cpo 555 699-2 [61]

Telemann Violin Concerto series on cpo has been more capacious than its title suggests. It encompasses works for two, three and four violins, as well as for viola, and more loosely concertante works. Elizabeth Wallfisch and The Wallfisch Band have appeared on all of the previous releases (see here, and the further links to earlier releases within). This concluding volume features other soloists, and Carin van Heerden directs her orchestra. It also covers the conventional concerto genre – ouverture-suites with soloist featured in earlier instalments – but in Telemann’s output these can still take an intriguing variety of form. Not only do the concertos on this disc vary between three or four movements, but the first here – for two violins, thought to be a fairly early work – seems to follow the model of a Corelli concerto grosso. It comprises discrete sections within movements, and short episodes which quickly emerge out of the busy orchestral texture and sink back into it.

The small, though not one to a part, L’Orfeo Barockorchester makes for a sprightly account of this concerto. Its fanfare-like opening gives way to a lively Allegro that ends in an Adagio section, all before a second fast movement. There is a lovely singing quality in the slow Affettuoso third movement – where Julia Huber and Martin Jopp sensitively elaborate the solo lines  – before a joyful concluding Allegro.

If the spirit of any composer hovers over the rest of the disc, it is Vivaldi – in the music’s generally robust rhythms. Specifically, the austere dotted Grave opening of the G minor double concerto, with almost ghostly accompaniment and strange harmonic turns, inhabits the same spooky realm as the Italian’s La notte Concerto. Also Vivaldian are the antiphonal exchanges of the gigue second movement and the finale, as well as the latter’s sequences. And the same composer is evoked in the wistful, simple melodies of the slow movements of the C major and G major Concertos and, contrariwise, in the virtuosic double stopping of the latter’s finale, some of which is executed with Julia Huber’s appropriate show-stopping arpeggiation and bariolage.

The interpretations, however, are not especially in the character of Vivaldi. A slightly dry wiriness replaces Italian lustre in the fast movements, and there is a raw, almost rough quality in slow ones instead of a bright cantabile. In the A major Concerto’s Largo, Huber on the second violin digs into the strings a little, as though to create the mellower effect of a viola. It is that instrument, or the more old-fashioned viol, that both soloists seem to imitate in the C major Concerto, especially in its stark unison opening.

In the middle of the disc comes a lyrical account of the most famous of Telemann’s string concertos, that for the viola. Despite quite a languid Largo to begin, Lucas Schurig-Breuß is tender in the solo part. He ornaments it generously, contrasts with the more sombre, vibrato-less Andante as the third movement, and ends in a brisk finale.

To round off the disc – as an encore to the whole series, as the booklet says – is a vigorous account of the E minor Concerto for ripieno strings alone. The concluding gigue’s momentum is sustained unceasingly to the end, where it ends with a mischievous hide-and-seek pianissimo. The format of the work, without a soloist, also recalls Vivaldi’s essays in the genre, with a difference. Some passages are more contrapuntal, and in others the violin soloists do come to the fore, particularly as a pair in the slow movement over discreet viola and wandering ground bass accompaniment; so, the Corellian concerto grosso looms large again.

These are not performances of sensual richness, but they rightly reward Telemann with a distinct character of his own, rather than casting these works as derivatives of their Italian models. As such, the disc marks a fitting culmination to this comprehensive series. 

Curtis Rogers

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Contents
Concerto in D major for two violins, TWV 52:D3
Concerto in A major for two violins, TWV 52:A2
Concerto in C major for two violins, TWV 52:C2
Concerto in G major for viola, TWV 51:G9
Concerto in G minor for two violins, TWV 52:g1
Concerto in G major for violin; TWV 51:G6
Concerto in E minor for strings, TWV 43:e5