Telemann: 6 Violin Sonatas (Frankfurt 1715)

Rare is the month at present when Brilliant Classics does not release a new recording which delves further into the protean output of that most prolific of composers, Georg Philipp Telemann. In the year that he is remembered with particular enthusiasm, 250 years after his death in Hamburg, the breadth of his achievement can be appreciated more than ever, not least thanks to recent recordings of the recorder sonatas (BC95247), concertos and suites for flute (BC95147), double concertos with recorder (BC95249), oboe concertos (BC95379), and a reissue of the classic account of the complete Tafelmusik (BC92177), which is the modern counterpart to the Bruggen recording that brought Telemann's name to so many listeners half a century ago.

Much of this music, it will be noted, concentrates on the composer's fondness for wind instruments. Now Valerio Losito brings our attention to the accompanied sonatas. Rather as with Bach, when we think of Telemann and the violin, it is the unaccompanied music that first springs to mind, for the free and unbridled imagination and the evident pleasure it gives to violinists who perform and record the 12 fantasias. However (like Bach), Telemann produced a set of six sonatas for violin accompanied by harpsichord, with or without a separate basso continuo, and first published in 1715.

The sonatas were effectively his opus 1, published in 1715 at the comparatively late age of 24, and dedicated to the violinplaying Duke of Saxe‐Weimar, from whom Telemann evidently wished to curry favour to judge from his long and obsequious preface. In just six sonatas may be found a remarkable diversity of elements: the Italianate style and Corelli‐like fugues of Sonatas 1 and 5, echoes of Polish and 'gypsy' folk music in Sonatas 3 and 4, melodious arias reminiscent of Handel in sonata 3, and dance movements in the French style in Sonatas 2 and 6. Telemann's genius allowed him to condense and reconcile in one volume parallel worlds that would appear to be mutually incompatible.