Commentaries

Prominent artistic personalities comment on their personal relationship to Georg Philipp Telemann.

Do you remember your first encounter with Telemann’s music or do you associate a special experience with it?

As a 16-year-old beginner on the (modern) oboe, I soon came into contact with his oboe sonatas, the “Kleinen Cammer-Music” and other chamber music (my father was an organist and I remember recording the trio sonata in E flat major with obligatory harpsichord, here with organ, on vinyl record). Even with friends Telemann’s chamber music was always present. Later, with the baroque oboe, about 12 own records and CDs with oboe sonatas, trios and quartets were created. Players were Barthold Kuijken, Robert Kohnen, Frans Bruggen, Gustav Leonhard, Richte van der Meer, René Jacobs etc. Also from my own ensemble “Il Fondamento” there are CDs with orchestral suites, oboe concertos and a recording with Christmas cantatas.

are very typical of Telemann’s work. Drama without exaggeration, but still rhetorically and alive and fresh.

What would you like to talk about with Telemann over a glass of wine?

An incredible imagination, always surprising. He processed the folk music (the Polish especially) so lively and with good taste like no other. The drama, even in his instrumental music, is very special, it never goes too far and always remains rhetorical and lightly. The rezitatives (secco and accompagnato) in cantatas and oratorios are perhaps the best that can be found in the first half of the 18th century

_{[Source: Telemann aus Magdeburg. 50 Jahre betont. Program of the Magdeburg Telemann Festival, 9.-18. March 2012, page. 62.]}

_{http://www.ilfondamento.be/}