Ensemble Labirinto Armonico - Telemann: Trio Sonatas (2020)

The great German composer Georg Philipp Telemann (Magdeburg, 1681 – Hamburg, 1767) was a contemporary of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) and Friedrich Händel (1685-1759), whom he personally met and to whom he was bound by friendship and esteem. At the Eisenach court, where Telemann became “Konzertmeister” and “Kapellmeister”, he met Bach whose son Carl Philip Emanuel (born in 1714 and destined to become his successor in Hamburg) he baptized. While in Halle and Leipzig, he shared with Händel the abandonment of the legal studies, to which both young men had been forced to start, and the passion for music and lyric opera. Moreover, the two remained in contact for the rest of their lives although Händel was brought to England by his own career, and they exchanged not only musical scores by letter but also exotic flowers, that they both liked passionately, as witnessed by the only two surviving Handel’s letters to Telemann. By comparing these three great musicians with each other, Telemann – at least in life – was certainly no less famous than the other two; having also lived longer, as a composer he was indeed the most prolific of all: the works of his endless catalogue, which ranges from sacred to secular music, touching all the genres practiced at that time (from opera to sacred cantatas, from vocal to instrumental music for the most heterogeneous ensembles), are more numerous than Bach’s and Handel’s productions.