Telemann 'Bout It

The Bach Sinfonia, March 22, 2008

Daniel Abraham and the Bach Sinfonia began their concert Saturday night in Woodside United Methodist Church (in beautiful Silver Spring, Maryland) with a crisp, smooth sinfonia from a Bach cantata, appropriately enough. It cleansed the palate and whetted the appetite for the rest of the concert, which presented the exotic flavors of Georg Philipp Telemann.

Classical-music nerds know that most cognoscenti repped Telemann more than Bach while the two were alive, and J.S. only caught up and passed G.P. in the last two centuries; of course, Bach and others now draw so much attention that Telemann's vast achievements get little popular recognition. The question that comes to mind is: Why did this happen?

I'll put my betting nickel on two reasons: (1) Telemann wrote too much for us to easily make favorites of individual works, and (2) Telemann's mastery can be found more in instrumental color than in melody or harmony, and mastery in color tends to be devalued as time passes.

The first reason is pretty obvious: As noted in music/artistic director Abraham's always-engaging program notes, dude wrote 3,000 cantatas that we know of! He estimated that he had written about 600 orchestral suites! This is not a situation that leads to the listening public getting familiar with enough individual works to make a composer's reputation. See how the Brandenburg Concertos are much better-known than Bach's cantata output — there are only six concertos vs. two-hundred-some cantatas. (And there were probably more than that in real historical life; those are just the cantatas we have on hand now. Sigh.) Happily, enterprising groups can mitigate this difficulty by selecting particularly attractive Telemann works for public airing, as occurred Saturday night.

The second reason (the instrumental color thing I mentioned above? Remember?) was illustrated by the first piece the Bach Sinfoniers played Saturday, the Quartet in D minor for two flutes, bassoon, and continuo from the second production of Tafelmusik. Sandra del Cid and Thomas MacCracken adeptly navigated G.P.'s flute lines, and the whistly high timbres of the baroque flutes contrasted intriguingly with Sue Black's bassoon, equally on point underneath. Almost every moment in the quartet had an ear-catching sound. But Telemann neglected to include any real hooky melody, at least to these ears, and the harmonic motion was both pleasant and pretty conventional.

Yet when Telemann does produce a melody that catches in your mind, it goes a long way, as in the succeeding Concerto in F Major for three violins (same book of Tafelmusik, too). Our soloists —Bach Sinfonia concertmaster Wendy Harton Benner, Erin Sammon, and Leslie Nero — made a fine ripenio to the Sinfonia's tutti. Although each had momentary struggles with their solo parts, they all had a clear idea of what they wanted to do and brought it off stylishly. As a bonus, their contrasting approaches — Benner aristocratic and controlled, Sammon rhapsodic, Nero a little wilder than the other two — that  made their interactions with each other as compelling as their interactions with the orchestra. With nice big themes like the ones Telemann provided here and on-point batonsmanship from Abraham to shape the shifting string colors, the concerto piqued one's interest from beginning to end.

So how awesome would a Telemann work be that had memorable melodies, novel timbres, and (as an unexpected bonus) special musical effects? The answer came after intermission in the form of G.P.'s "Water Music," subtitled "Hamburg Ebb and Flow" for the city that the suite helped to celebrate. This music bristles with zest and imagination, fitting dance rhythms into depictions of various water-related mythological figures: rustling quick figures for Aeolus's tempest; a quirky yet relaxed minuet for the Zephyr, featuring an astonishingly piquant winds-only B section; a massive heaving crescendo in the section actually depicting the tides, in gigue rhythm. It's tons of fun all the way through.

The robust playing of the Sinfonia's continuo section helped anchor (ha ha!) the beat, while oboists Stephen Bard and Sarah Weiner joined the crew from the quartet to make the most of Telemann's exuberant wind writing. It was a performance that fully supported Abraham's effusive praise of the work before intermission, and one to even up the posthumous reputation score a little bit, too.

THE PEOPLE WHO BAROQUE YOU OFF A LITTLE SOMETHIN'

• Sandra del Cid is cute.
• Michelle Roy, besides being an eloquent and entertaining continuo realizer, is totally awesome. On Saturday she not only featured her trademark structured jacket and jauntily serrated-looking hairstyle — sadly, Google fails to find an example of this for me to link to — but also a pair of pink-framed glasses that made her look even more like a punk harpsichordist than normal. I salute you, Michelle Roy, for having the courage to rock the look and the skill to bring it off.
• Two little kids were camped out in the front row for the whole concert, and didn't make any noise that I heard. Good job! In the finale of the Water Music, one kid began trying to conduct along with Abraham. The beat was so implacably strong that she eventually figured it out and managed to get her pointed finger swaying in time. It was a beautiful thing to watch (and hear).

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