Pratum Integrum Orchestra

Pratum Integrum Orchestra – Georg Philipp Telemann: Complete Orchestral Suites Vol.4 (2011) SACD ISO

SACD / DSD By admin · June 8, 2022 · Comments off

Among the art treasures of Dresden is a collection of music manuscripts that in part goes back to the repertoire of the Dresden Hofkapelle, which was founded more than 450 years ago and became world famous in the 18th century. One of its patrons, the Saxon Elector Friedrich August I, known as August the Strong (reigned 1694–1733), had been elected King of Poland in 1697. According to the feudal concept of representation, this rise in status was the cause of an even further increase in the display of splendour, from which the residence and its court chapel profited as well. August had grown up into a fertile cultural tradition. Journeys abroad had rendered him susceptible to the refined culture at the French court as well as to Italian art. He was as fickle in his aesthetic predilections as in his amorous adventures, open to change in music, drama and the opera. Whereas particularly in the performing arts the artists were dependent on the Prince’s favour, the court chapel, which employed German, Italian, French and soon also Bohemian and Polish musicians, enjoyed a long tradition and was allowed to develop in a continuous fashion. Just as he absorbed into his Green Vault the most precious gems, in his royal household he employed the most exceptional talents, turning Dresden for a while into a melting pot of European culture.

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Pratum Integrum Orchestra – Georg Philipp Telemann: Complete Orchestral Suites Vol.3 (2010) SACD ISO

SACD / DSD By admin · June 8, 2022 · Comments off

If I hear the first part of a good overture I experience a peculiar elevation of my mood; during the second part my spirits spread out, full of delight; and when the serious ending comes along, they collect themselves and retreat to their usual abode. I think this is a pleasant alternation which an orator could hardly improve upon. A close observer might be able to trace these emotions in the mien of an attentive listener. (Johann Mattheson, Der vollkommene Capell-Meister, Hamburg 1739, p. 208, § 36) Johann Mattheson (1681–1764), the contemporary and fellow musician of Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767), here puts into words what music connoisseurs particularly liked about a large group of instrumentalists playing together in the typical manner of a musical introduction to a French theatre performance: the beginning – nearly always marked by dotted rhythms – which draws in the audience with its broadly declamatory, harmonically rich presentation; the lively continuation based on the imitative texture of the various parts, which encourages a sophisticated manner of listening; and finally the return to the initial affect, often seasoned with a temporary harmonic deviation. This artful succession of concentration, distraction, and again concentration was an excellent way to prepare for what was to follow – a stagedpresentation or an instrumental suite.

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Pratum Integrum Orchestra – Georg Philipp Telemann: Complete Orchestral Suites Vol.2 (2009) SACD ISO

SACD / DSD By admin · June 8, 2022 · Comments off

In 1725 Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767) in addition to his official and other professional responsibilities started his own publishing firm with which he realized a variety of projects, some of them using innovative formats. While it is generally known that he engraved his music onto copperplates himself, a look at his correspondence reveals that he also organized the distribution of the finished products by selling copies from his own apartment and in the “music shop at the stock exchange” as well as through his contacts with musicians, booksellers and merchants throughout Europe. Until 1740 Telemann published severalhundred works gathered in almost fifty printed opera. The culminating point of his private publishing endeavor was his Musique de Table of 1733, which apart from enhancing his international reputation must have been highly profitable, as he was eager to invest in new projects. To this end he offered, in his catalogue flyers, “works that may be edited by and by” in order to whet his clients’ appetite for new compositions and to find out which kind of music might sell.

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Pratum Integrum Orchestra – Georg Philipp Telemann: Complete Orchestral Suites Vol.1 (2008) SACD ISO

SACD / DSD By admin · June 8, 2022 · Comments off

The Russian historical-performance group Pratum Integrum has embarked on a complete recording of Georg Philipp Telemann’s orchestral suites, which number more than 100. This debut album includes three of them in a program lasting just over 52 minutes, and though the dimensions of the project are daunting, the initial indications are good. Like Bach’s suites, Telemann’s are collections of French-style dances, some of them formally fixed like sarabandes and courantes, while others give freer play to the imagination. Imagination is Telemann’s strong suit, and the collection of unusually conceived movements keeps these suites lively, and presumably those to come will be the same way. Consider the musical-joke-like “Galimatias en Rondeau” (track 12) from the Suite in E minor, TWV 55:e3, with its comically contrasting strains (a galimatias is a representation of gibberish), or the “Irlandoise” (track 3) from the D minor suite, TWV 55:d2, a kind of Irish jig, or the explicitly programmatic pieces of which Couperin would have been proud. Also intriguing is the movement sequence of the Suite for orchestra in D minor, which ends with a movement marked “Entrée.” You might suspect a copyist’s error if not for the odd middle-of-the-conversation opening of the Overture; perhaps the piece was intended for some kind of special occasion in which the music would end with the “entrée” of an important personage. The Pratum Integrum Orchestra, predominantly young, is promising indeed. It doesn’t yet have the orchestra-of-virtuosi quality of some of its Western European counterparts, but its performances have a briskly enjoyable quality with plenty of percussive rhythmic drive in the continuo. One looks forward to future releases in the series. Notes are in Russian, German, and English; they’re informative and enthusiastic, as is usual for this label, but annotator Anna Bulycheva kills Telemann off too early when she refers to 1737 as “towards the end” of his life; he lived for another 30 years. The sound is not up to the usual audiophile standard of the Caro Mitis label; close-up microphone placement and a steely edge highlight instrument noise that Telemann’s audiences would have found bizarre. ~~AllMusic Review by James Manheim

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