Telemann in the Tavern - Ensemble I Zefirelli
It should come to pass that I would review an effort by the Hamburg-based ensemble I Zefirelli, who won the WDR3 Special Prize at the International Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber Competition!
This album comes on the heels of an earlier effort focused on Handel’s music “in the pub.” Telemann wrote so much instrumental music, and concept albums haven’t been as numerous as those trying to make a complete appraisal of his published collections. However, there have been some, and this one in particular comes to mind, as it tackles some of the same music. But as no composer is an island, this album also includes music composed by other personalities.
The opening track seems foreign to the program in style; the location of the tavern may be far away from Germany, Turkey perhaps? The anonymous song dates from the turn of the 17th century. The piece’s lyrics, however, might as well have come out of a jukebox in a more contemporary bar, if not for the words themselves, then the theme of love, pain, and misery for which those words are dedicated.
The next vocal work is by Telemann, a secular cantata for bass voice, Sagt ihr allerschönsten Lippen, TWV 20:66, much the same kind of fodder as the opening piece, of a man chasing a woman, in this case, Tecinde. The vocals on this album are contributed by Jeroen Finke, who identifies as a baritone. His voice, I think, is a good comparison to that of Nahuel Di Pierro, who recently released an album of music by Handel. Di Pierro has a far more expressive voice, and to be fair, he’s singing music from operas, but this release featuring Finke is a good example of a more historically-informed style of singing appropriate for late baroque repertoire. To be fair, the piece presented on this album by Telemann, is less appropriate for the stage, and as intended here, perhaps, fodder for the likes of a tavern (or coffeehouse).
The album, of course, also features instrumental numbers. The opening suite, called in the booklet a Pasticcio-Sonata, mixes pieces by Telemann with an introduction for keyboard by Carl J.F. Haltmeier, a contemporary, alongside an anoymous piece entitled Bizzaria. The musicians write:
Our CD presents an overview of music in Hamburg around 1720, as it might have been heard or conceived in a historic tavern.
Three of the tracks from this Pasticcio feature the cello, from Telemann’s D major sonata, TWV 41:D6. Just like Finke’s voice, the cello’s proximity is close, the sound intimate, which includes support from a lute. I think the sound befits the theme of the album. It’s up to you to include your own clinking of glasses or background conversation, that one might imagine.
Telemann did, of course, write music for professional musicians, but he didn’t stop at catering to them alone; there was money to be made in publishing music for amateurs. The very idea of pulling from a sheet music collection to provide entertainment, given the availability of music for amateurs, isn’t that much an improbable one. This “sonata” or suite, how ever you call it, however, is strange as the instrumentarium changes. The Telemann polonaise, TWV 41:D4, includes percussion, recorder, and a violin taking on the role of a pastoral drone. Maybe I’d have bought into this idea of considering this as a suite of sorts had the instrumentarium remained the same throughout?
The next instrumental work is a piece proper by Telemann, from his collection Scherzi melodichi TWV 42:A4. However here the viola has been replaced by the most ubiquitous of amateur instruments, the recorder. Both the violin and recorder, in this case, are technically rocking out the faster passages with good precision.
Telemann’s Fantasia in C, TWV 40:8, is given folk treatment, an arrangement of a piece originally scored for a single flute. The second Fantasia, in A minor, TWV 40:25, is played more “straight” in its original configuration for violin alone. The piece has far more gravitas and seriousness to it than the piece that preceded it. I question if it fits the theme of the album in the same way.
What certainly does fit, is the minor-dance-inspired trio piece, marked presto, from TWV 42:D10, featuring again the recorder and violin as the solo instruments.
The lute gets its spotlight in the rendition of one of Weiss’s movements from his suite, WeissSW 49 Der Getreue Musikmeister. Far more folk flair comes in the form of the Overture to Keiser’s Der läscherliche Prinz Jodelet. I can’t remember where I have heard this jocular piece before, but it’s not the first time here.
The final vocal track is from Telemann’s opera, Pimpinone. Finke is forced to sing as the man and woman in the dialog, and answers the call with good intonation while also, I think, conveying the humor at the same time, focused on a domestic disagreement about housework!
The album ends as it began, with an arrangement of German folk songs popular at the time.
I am not sure how to really view this album released on the Arcantus label. Musically, or how the music is executed, it’s all well done. Luise Catenhusen, Tilmann Albrecht, Jakob Christoph Kuchenbuch, Tobias Tietze, and Maria Carrasco Gil are all young, strong players. As mentioned, the sound is close and intimate, as they are just a table or two away in the confines of a cozy watering hole. Combining Telemann with folk songs has at least some reach, given that others, too, have wanted to expose Telemann’s borrowing from folk music in the composition of his own works. And yes, we know that Telemann ran the Collegium Musicum in Leipzig (not Hamburg) and very likely played music to entertain, that written himself alongside pieces by others.
Where I am less comfortable is in the ensemble’s need to make arrangements to Telemann’s own works. The flute fantasia and the so-called pasticcio work? Their arrangement either needed to live alongside the original, or else, the violin example that follows should have been arranged too, for some parity. Those programming issues aside, I have to ask if the concept works and how does it either shed more light onto the composer and his music, or do something that elevates it from how we’ve seen it before?
I just can’t help but hear the Telemann violin fantasia performed here being quasi religious and serious. It’s well played. But it feels out of place alongside all the other pieces, which for me, at least I could imagine in the confines of the tavern.
Maybe in the end the concept isn’t the strongest one for me. But that aside, Ensemble I Zefirelli are all accomplished musicians, and I dare say, I think they have a sense of humor too. I can’t say they are performing in tavernas in contemporary society, but I know I’d love to frequent one where they’d be the evening’s entertainment.
