Telemann: Overture (Suite) TWV 55:e1 in E minor for 2 flutes, strings & b.c. (Tafelmusik I No. 1)

According to my good friend Wikipedia, the Concert spirituel was one of the first public concert series in existence. The concerts began in Paris in 1725 and ended in 1790. The series was founded to provide entertainment during Lent and on religious holidays when the other spectacles (the Paris Opera, Comédie-Française, and Comédie-Italienne) were closed. The programmes featured a mixture of sacred choral works and virtuosic instrumental pieces, and for many years took place in a magnificently-decorated Salle des Cent Suisses (Hall of the Hundred Swiss Guards) in the Tuileries Palace. They started at six o’clock in the evening and were primarily attended by well-to-do bourgeois, the lower aristocracy and foreign visitors. Jordi Savall brings these magnificent evenings back to life, thanks to an imaginary ‘concert spirituel’ programme featuring 3 major composers from Italy, Germany and France : Corelli, Telemann and Rameau. This album enables us to (re)discover the quintessence of the musical life during the reign of Louis XV. Enrico Onofri recently appeared at the Lufthansa Baroque Festival directing the European Union Baroque Orchestra and his own Ensemble Imaginarium.

In his Musique de Table, through skilful organisation, breadth of imagination and sheer masterful inspiration, Telemann concentrates the entire range of European musical styles. This bravura display brings together ‘what stern custom had divided’. Here is the ultimate glittering banquet of late Baroque goût in all its rich diversity.

The Freiburger Barockorchester can look back on a success story lasting over 20 years and is a popular guest at the foremost concert halls and opera houses. The Freiburgers’ artistic credo, however, remains unchanged: the creative curiosity of each individual member, with the aim of playing a composition in as lively and expressive a manner as possible. This also involves assigning demanding solo concertos to players from the orchestra’s own ranks. Cultivated, yet at the same time exciting, ensemble playing has thus become the orchestra’s international trademark.

The FBO collaborates with leading artists such as René Jacobs, Andreas Staier and Thomas Quasthoff, and enjoys a close cooperation with harmonia mundi France. Under the artistic directorship of its two Konzertmeisters Gottfried von der Goltz and Petra Müllejans, and under the baton of selected conductors, the FBO presents around 100 performances per year in a variety of formations from chamber to opera orchestra: a self-governing ensemble with its own subscription concerts at the Konzerthaus in Freiburg, the Liederhalle in Stuttgart and the Berlin Philharmonie in addition to a worldwide touring programme.