A celebration of Telemann.
This concert celebrated the life and works of Georg Philipp Telemann. It is entitled
“The Entrepreneur”. That is an apt title. Telemann was an enterprising spirit on three levels. One was his sheer prodigiousness – on average, he composed one composition every day since he was 18. Another was his ability to adapt the best tunes from other composers, and in this he was unmatched except perhaps by Handel. The other is the fact that he found himself at home so easily in each of the modish styles of the day – French, Italian and even, it seems, Turkish…but more on that later.
The concert opened with Telemann’s Ouverture-Suite in E minor from L’Omphale TWV 55:e8. The Les Magiciens is fittingly dark, brooding and powerful. It is a characteristically French plainte, until the spirits are lifted by a delightful dialogue between Sally Melhuish and Alana Blackburn on recorders. John Ma on violin gave colour with his usual liking for a little scordatura to give a bit of edge to the otherwise orthodox harmonies.
Next was Telemann’s Concerto in G major, TWV 51:G2. But not until Telemann himself appeared, in the form of Canberra-based actor Colin Milner complete with Baroque wig and robes. He announced that he liked to adapt some of his confreres’ best tunes. That was no exaggeration. In the Concerto in G major, we can immediately hear the nostalgic warmth of the Allegro moderato of JS Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto in F minor BWV 1056 (which itself was presumably an adaptation of an earlier oboe concerto of Bach’s). Sally Walker was front and centre on Baroque flute. She showed a mastery of soft playing on the Baroque flute without sounding reedy, which is no easy feat.
Handel’s Concerto Grosso in G minor Op 6 No 6, HWV 324 could be mistaken for Corelli. It is unmistakably Italian – episodic phrasing and all. The second movement was strangely chromatic, and in the end we had a fiery dialogue between John Ma and Sarah Papadopoulos on violins, with syncopated bass strings.
The Allegretto from CPE Bach’s Symphony in B minor, Wq 182/5 showed just how radically styles had changed after 1750. The empfindsamer stil gave a new meaning to the stilus fantasticus that the likes of Buxtehude had started. The music wavers feverishly between loud and soft and there is an overall mix between malaise and expectation.
A special treat was a harpsichord solo by Monika Kornel performing Rameau’s Suite in a minor. The harmonic progression is simple enough but it gives a glimpse of Rameau’s mastery of the art of variation. It is a rare delight to be able to hear Kornel perform solo. Her articulation was thoughtful, measured and never overdone. She let the piece speak for itself. The next piece, the Modere from Telemann’s Paris Quartet in E minor, TWV 43:e4 was evidently centred on the same withering, plaintive theme, and Walker again played on flute to great effect.
It would not be a Salut Baroque concert with a bit of Eastern music. This time it was the Iag Bari form the Uhrovska Collection (1730) by an anonymous composer. It featured various strings solos on a syncopated bass. Undoubtedly the finest solo was by Ma, who has a penchant for colourful ornamentations and a playful use of all the potential of the fingerboard.
