Classical music thread welcoming your suggestions and why...

Very interesting post ... Thanks very much...

No one can disparage Telemann...I know some piece of him that put him at Bach level...( His sonatas for oboe by Holliger ) The problem of Telemann is the same as with Vivaldi and Mozart... They dont need to work as others , musical inspiration comes too easyly , they seat and wrote or play... ... Telemann if i remember published many thousands opus ( in addition to composing more than 1000 cantatas and 600 suites, he also created operas, passions, oratorios, and concertos for a variety of instruments. He also penned numerous passions, ten oratorios, and more than a dozen masses, making him easily the most prolific composer of church music in history. Telemann’s instrumental works include about 125 orchestral suites, 125 concertos, 40 quartets, 130 trios, around 90 solo sonatas, and 145 keyboard pieces. It has been suggested that he may have written more than 3000 pieces)....

He never work hard and only wrote tirelessly ... Then disparaging Telemann after listening 100 hundred opus means not much... 😊 Almost nobody know really the music of Telemann... how many hours to listen only half of it ? would it be the best half ?

the only problem of Telemann is Bach continuous  perfection with way more less works  ... 😊

I will go for him too ...

Excellent suggestion...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NmRrrfaJB4

I’ve been listening to a big box set of Musica Antiqua Koln. There are a lot of the Baroque “usual suspects” here but what is really grabbing me is the Telemann. That composer, who published a veritable ton, is frequently dismissed as being formulaic. Oh, but what a practioner of formulas! The invention seems inexhaustible. He wrote for every instrument of his time but his Violin and recorder pieces seem particularly daring.

I need to explore more Renaissance Music. I can’t comment meaningfully on Gesualdo at present. I’ve been meaning to turn my focus there for some time.

Marriner and the ASMF are frequently overlooked because they were non HIPP practitioners, but they did pioneering work in terms of popularizing Mozart and others for smaller ensembles. I cherish their records

I've got my share of Musica Antiqua Koln LPs & box sets. Whether the stuff they perform is obscure or Greatest Hits, they do it with soul and panache. A particular favorite of mine is the three LP set Deutsche Kammermusik vor Bach, stuff J.S. listened to when he was a sprite. I've come close to wearing out Side One, the side that features the works of Johann Adam Reincken, an under-rated, under-heard composer if there ever was one. A kaleidoscope of moods. Great tunes.

Me and the wife saw the ensemble live when they did a concert in Pasadena. After the performance, they joined the concertgoers in the lobby to share drinks & snacks. My wife considered it an imposition to ask the band to mingle with us but I was in seventh heaven. I mumbled a few words in German to 'em and shook a couple hands.

@edcyn Interesting, I had read the Goebel could be a bit standoffish, nice to see something to the contrary.

  @mahgister No one is disputing that Telemann was to prodigious for his own good, in the Historical Appreciation sweepstakes.  He worked on the model of great painters of the day, in that he had a room full of apprentices.  How that system worked is beyond me. Perhaps he whistled a tune he had thought up while using the water closet and told them “Use formula IIIb on this and show me what you have before lunchtime “. Presumably there is a fair amount of chaff in there, and we rely upon the likes of MAK to be sort of a quality control expert.

  However, we can only judge the results. At the end of the day I don’t care if a canvas by Rembrandt has 20% or 80% painted by an apprentice with the great man supervising.  One cannot imagine Beethoven or Brahms using Telemann’s compositional method (actually, there is some evidence that a substantial amount of Beethoven’s Works without opus—the stuff that he churned out to make a living-may largely be the labor of students such as Ferdinand Ries), but ultimately one should accept the music on it’s own terms.  It may not storm the gates of heaven like J.S. Bach, but it paves the streets leading to those gates, if you will accept that mixed metaphor 

You are completely right....

Telemann worked after the era where music was merely Church order or Prince order, but now middle class and bourgeois commands and demand was enormous and the musicians amateurs numbers too, and Telemann was a self taught musician and did not come from a musical dynasty , he taught more to amateurs musicians not like Bach who was busy with his multiples children...He then used the amateurs playing musicians and apprentice composers around him like Bach use his children ... Half of the work of Telemann is lost... And of the remaing half, half had never been performed...

i like your sentence :

It may not storm the gates of heaven like J.S. Bach, but it paves the streets leading to those gates, if you will accept that mixed metaphor

i too like the sentence :

It may not storm the gates of heaven like J.S. Bach, but it paves the streets leading to those gates, 

It resonates with my (short) impressions of his work -- which include the oboe sonatas (Holliger, I agree of course).

Sorry to join in so late, but I would like to add to the discussion on D Barenboim: I propose to rephrase the question as,

DB,  a conductor or a pianist?

I have heard DB both as a conductor (Elgar, Brahms, etc) and pianist (Brahms 1, 7 other recordings). 

My response is, definitely much better pianist than conductor... I am not a music professional so mine is an amateurish approach.

My experience with the discussion, re maestros, resonates with the thoughts expressed above, especially regarding Furt & Celi & T... to add a short comment, both F & C succeed in touching the listener's inner soul and, by their conducting, let out the humanity hidden in many compositions (many examples; Celi: Mozart Requiem, Furt: Beethoven 3 recording of 1944 (?) in Vienna...)

In this respect, trying to emulate Furt, for example, is a limitation in itself, in that 

a) we already have Furtwangler, the original item😉

b) following endlessly in someone else's footsteps often leads one away from discovering their own path

Whereas, as a pianist, DB played an exciting /interesting Brahms under Celibidache & recently under Sir Simon Rattle. (Although for this piece I would prefer Gilels)

Regards