Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767): 4 Trio-Sonatas

00:00 Sonata in D minor for Flute, Oboe & Continuo: Largo - Allegro - Affettuoso - Presto 08:11 Trio in E minor for Flute, Oboe & Continuo: Affettuoso - Allegro - Dolce - Vivace 19:47 Trio in D major for Flute, Oboe & Continuo: Vivace - Andante - Vivace 26:24 Trio Sonata in E flat major for Oboe, Harpsichord & Continuo: Largo - Vivace - Mesto - Vivace The Maxence Larrieu Quartet: Maxence Larrieu, flute Jacques Chambon, oboe Bernard Fonteny, cello Anne-Marie Beckensteiner, harpsichord Musicologial Information Original Sources and Modern Editions: Sonata in D minor for Flute, Oboe & Continuo — ¨Essercizii musici overo Dodeci Soli e Dodeci Trii a diversi stromenti...¨, Hamburg, probably after 1740. The D minor sonata is the second of the trios. Modern ed. by Hugo Ruf, Kassel, 1961. Trio in E minor for Flute, Oboe & Continuo — ¨Musique de Table, partagé en Trois Productions...¨, Hamburg, 1733. The E minor trio is the fourth piece of the second production. Modern ed. by Johann Philipp Hinnenthal, Kassel, 1962. Trio in D major for Flute, Oboe & Continuo — ¨III Trietti methodici, e III Scherzi, a 2 Flauti traversieri, overo 2 Violini, col Fondamento...¨, Hamburg, 1731. The D major trio is the second of the trios. Modern ed. by Max Schneider, Leipzig, 1948. Trio Sonata in Eb major for Oboe, Harpsichord & Continuo — ¨Essercizii musici...¨ The Eb major trio sonata is the twelfth of the trios. Modern ed. Hermann Tottcher and Friedrich Scholz, Hamburg, 1957. Art: The fortune teller (c.1720) by Jean-Baptiste Pater (1695-1736) Georg Philipp Telemann, born four years before Bach in 1681, died in 1767 at 86 (seventeen years after Bach), was one of the most extraordinary self-made musical craftsmen in Western art. His life and his enormous output of music together refute — at least in this one instance — the whole fine pedagogical conceit which over the centuries has assumed a formal, methodical education to be essential for an aspiring composer or performer. Telemann was completely self-taught in music, from his childhood years on. His formal musical education consisted of two weeks of organ study as a small boy — after that much, he broke away and, he tells us, never studied music again. Yet he became one of the best known, most successful and above all, one of the most rigorously professional composers of his time, in a period when eccentricity or “originality” was little appreciated and high craftsmanship enormously important. Without a doubt, the greatest attribute of genius, if we are ever to come to a useful definition of it, is this astonishing ability for self-education, the power to choose unerringly from the mass of heterogeneous experience thrust forward towards one by life’s complex of contending interests and persuasions. In the presence of an outstanding mind such as Telemann's (or Mozart’s, or Beethoven’s), formal education is helpless, overwhelmed by a superior organizing force and a higher judgment. Mozart studied the innocuous piano concerti of little-known German and Austrian composers of his time. Telemann learned most of what he came to know simply by studying scores, or so he tells us. That, at least, is how he began, “listening” to music, in complete silence, the imagined sounds arising from the written notes. How he learned to read those sounds is left unexplained — for that in itself is an ability not very common among music lovers. And how he was able to interpret the scanty scores of those days into completely styled “performances” is something else again.