 Dans son autobiographie de 1718, Telemann rapporte que ses contemporains affirmaient fréquemment que "ses trios étaient ce qu’il avait produit de meilleur", parce qu’ils étaient écrits "de telle façon que chacune des deux voix supérieures avait autant à faire que l’autre". Le compositeur était devenu rapidement, et devait rester jusqu’à la fin du siècle, un modèle universellement reconnu et loué dans ce genre particulier. Et ce aussi bien auprès des simples mélomanes que des compositeurs et théoriciens comme, entre autres, Mattheson, Scheibe et Quantz. Il faut dire qu’on trouve effectivement dans tous ses très nombreux trios un emploi optimal des instruments mis en œuvre (à peu-près tous ceux existant à cette époque), et une basse inventive et innovante. Dans les cinq trios écrits pour flûte à bec (alto), violon et continuo qui nous sont restés, on trouve le compositeur au meilleur de lui-même, avec cette capacité extraordinaire de faire d’un instrument si humble en apparence le vecteur d’une invention inépuisable, d’une expressivité sans limite et d’une ampleur d’idées quasi-symphonique par moments. Car malgré le vœu (souvent réalisé) d’écrire deux voix mélodiques à égalité parfaite, c’est ici clairement la flûte à bec qui domine, instrument chéri de Telemann qui en jouait en virtuose, et qui lui confie ici certaines de ses plus belles idées. Les interprètes exceptionnels (Bosgraaf a déjà gravé plusieurs enregistrements consacrés au maître hambourgeois) de ces œuvres justement célèbres et plusieurs fois enregistrées, nous livrent ici une lecture pleine de sève et de couleurs de ces joyaux du haut baroque. Le talent extraordinaire du compositeur apparaît dans toute sa splendeur dans le duo final en si bémol, où la flûte et le violon, privés de continuo, tissent une splendide broderie enchâssant la pure merveille du « Largo e misurato », moment de bonheur sans mélange. (Jean-Michel Babin-Goasdoué) The present recording includes all five surviving trio sonatas for recorder, violin and basso continuo by Georg Philipp Telemann. As an encore, there is a charming duet for recorder and violin Telemann published in 1728-29 in his music periodical Der getreue Music-Meister. There is also a duet for these two instruments hidden in the Trio Sonata in A minor (TWV 42:a1) which has no basso continuo in the trio section of the final menuet. Telemann became seriously interested in composing trios during the period between 1708 and 1712, while he was working as the court kapellmeister in Bach’s native Eisenach. It was a genre that must have been close to his heart. “Specifically, people tried to persuade me that trios were my strongest point’’, he wrote in his autobiography as early as 1718 and he repeated remarks to that effect in 1740. Would he have recorded this laudatory characterization if he hadn’t secretly agreed? He had two of the trios published, both in A minor. The first sonata (TWV 42:a1) was in a volume of six trio sonatas for various instruments, published by the composer himself in 1718, by which time his talents had taken him as far as Frankfurt. The second sonata (TWV 42:a4) appeared in his collection Essercizii Musici. The other three trios have only survived in manuscript: two in the Darmstadt Universitätsund Landesbibliothek (TWV 42:f2, TWV 42:f8), the third in the library of the Royal Conservatory in Brussels. The authenticity of this last piece has recently been questioned. There are frequent parallel octaves in the violin and the bass, wholly against the rules of counterpoint. Telemann would never have done that. The assumption is that the bass was added later by somebody else. When the musicologist Klaus Hofmann wrote an article on the matter in the German music periodical Tibia (1/2009), he also questioned Telemann’s authorship of the upper parts – not convincingly, but that is by the way. In the next issue, Hofmann was able to announce the existence in the Landesbibliothek Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in Schwerin of a trio sonata for recorder and viola da gamba in G minor by one Pierre Prowo (1697– 1757), of which the opening measures of the fast second movement are amazingly similar to the opening measures of the Brussels trio sonata. Was Prowo, an organist from Altona near Hamburg, perhaps the composer of that piece as well? A year later, Hofmann discovered that the same library also contains a manuscript of Trio Sonata TWV 42:d10 …with Prowo’s name on the title page! That seemed to confirm the new attribution and solve the mystery. In my opinion the opposite is more probable. Other compositions show Prowo to be an incorrigible dilettante, unimpeded by much imagination. He had no problem with parallel fifths or octaves. The fact that his Trio Sonata for recorder and viola da gamba contains a section beginning almost exactly like the Brussels trio argues against his authorship rather than for it. It looks as though Prowo was hoping for some sparks of genius of his own by following the example of an inspired contemporary. Examining the rest of the Trio Sonata for recorder and viola da gamba, one sees him fail dismally. That Provo was capable of composing a sparkling, irresistible “Telemannesque” trio of the calibre of TWV 42:d10 is highly unlikely. The version of TWV 42:d10 in Schwerin has an extra movement: a poorly conceived, eight-measure adagio. The recorder offers only clichés, the violin accompanies and plays the initial measures unisono with the bass, in parallel octaves. This is where we discern Prowo’s mediocrity, I’m afraid. There is no comparison with the others movements. It would be taking things too far to go into detail here, but I suspect that this is what happened: two upper parts - recorder and violinof a trio sonata in D minor by Telemann were in circulation during the first half of the eighteenth century without the corresponding basso continuo. Pierre Prowo added one (in his typical dilettante fashion) and also added a clumsy little adagio. He felt justified in setting his own name to it: the “Schwerin version”. Somebody in the vicinity was aware of the circumstances, took the original upper parts, kept Prowo’s continuo part, left out the extra movement and restored the name of the real composer, reinstating Telemann: the “Brussels version”. Prowo provided the first movement with an unimaginative (and for Telemann unidiomatic) bass, dominated by groups of repeated eighth notes. I have written an entirely new continuo part for this movement. In other places I have made corrections in the bass, there where the voice leading has parallel octaves. And the solo parts for recorder and violin? Let’s uphold Telemann – Telemann at his best.
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