The three great contemporaries Bach, Handel and Telemann were the first to seek and to find the new idiom and language of sound which led trom the Baroque to the Classical. They were fully aware ot the experimental nature of their endeavours, and discussed them. Handel's interests, however, lay not so much in the direction of instrumentation as in that of melody, whose legitimacy he and Telemann investigated. Bach and Telemann advanced furthest ln the search for ever increasing new means of expression in sound. ln making concrete the boldest musical dreams, once and for all, for themselves and posterity, they succeeded in doing what their predecessors had only occasionally managed to contrlve under particularly favourable conditions. Their palette of sound achieved a richness which was not to be attained again for another two hundred years (although in a completely different way). Telemenn had ideal condltions under which to pursue his experiments and comparisons: his career as conductor and composer took hlm all over Europe, where he had the opportunity not only to hear the most accomplished virtuosi of the tlme also the best folkmusicians. His works are stimulated by all these new ideas. Apart trom this, from early youth he hlmself had played a number of string and wind instruments. Consequently, he knew ltow to suit his compositions to the technical potentialities of the various instruments. The virtuosi enjoyed playing his works because they saw in them an opportunity to show themselves to their best advantage.
The four works on this record are especially interesting in respect of the instrumentation. Not one of them ls conceivable in any form of instrumentatlon other than that demanded by the composer. In the Concerto for Recorder and Bassoon he places the bassoon as partner in dialogue to the recorder. The recorder had been tried and approved as a solo instrument a hundred times over, but except in a few cases the bassoon had hitherto been used merely as a bass instrument ln the orchestra. Telemann, however, handles the instrument with such sovereignty that it is immediately raised to equal rank and status The Concerto for Four Vlollns, that is four melodic instruments, forms a continuation consistent with the solo repertoire for single instruments without a bass, which was so popular at that time. The apparent disadvantage ol having a quartet made up of four instruments of the same pitch turns out, in fact, to be the special attraction of the piece, Telemann uses the necessarily confined situation to display harmonically daring experiments in tone colour. lt was just at the time of Telemann that the horn was dlcovered as an artistic musical instrument; hitherto it had been used exclusively for the hunt. It is interesting to note that the first travelling horn virtuosi, who, by the way, always performed à deux, were without exception huntsmen from Bohemia. It is only natural then that in the early works for horn hunting motifs appear in the forefront. The Concerto for Three Oboes and Three Violins presents a vigorous contest between these two instrumental groups, which were the most important of their time. Another interesting point here is the omission of the lower instruments of these groups such as the viola or oboe da caccia; unlike the Concerto for Four Violins, however, it contains a ground bass. Both groups are treated in exactly the same manner. Telemann, who elsewhere showed his mastery at bringing out the features peculiar to each instrument, here renounces any attempt at characterization of the violin or oboe by using typical motifs, and so succeeds in making the difference in tone colour the decisive factor.
Several allusions have been made here to the similarity of this music to dialogue. Eighteenth century music in particular had to "speak". The whole study in expression, the numerous rules of articulation to be found in the contemporary theory books are directed solely at bringing out the "rhetorlcal". Naturally, this applies more to concert music than to the suites made up of stylized dances. The eternal opposites, male -  female, demand-submission, are portrayed musically by means of continual contrasts; high - low; staccato - legato, and tonally recorder - bassoon; violin - oboe. These are, of course, only a few selected examples.
lt is obvious that the use of the original instruments, that is to say those which the composer himself heard, is of particular importance in performing compositions whose charm lies mainly in their tone. Many works, like the Concerto for Recorder and Bassoon, could not be performed on modern instruments without musical distortion. The recorder, which was not developed since the 18th century, would be completely overwhelmed by the volume and richness of tone of the modern bassoon. ln a modern rendering these pieces would lose in transparency, one of the greatest merits of old instruments, and in colourfulness of tone. The selection of key in the Horn Suite is only comprehensible and musically logical in a performance with the "natural" horn. The modern valve horn moves through the whole chromatic scale with almost piano-like uniformity: the "natural" horn is restricted to the "natural” notes with certain notes (on the horn in F it would be the B, B flat and D) that can be modified by inserting the hand into the bell of the instrument, i. e. "stopped notes". This, though, means that a noticeable change in tone quality takes place at the same time. Composers realized the value of this change in tone qualities and used it subtly to advantage. Even in the case of old woodwind instruments, here the bassoon and the oboes, it is above all the colour of the individual tone and contrast in sound of the different tones that produce an iredescent, ever changing sound picture. All Baroque instruments, even the violin, have a more distinct and characteristic difference in sound one from the other than their present-day counterparts. Thus the combination of these instruments in the orchestra, for example the frequent use of the oboe and violin together, does not simply produce an increase in sound as it does with modern instruments, but rather new characteristic colours. This manner of blending while retaining a full clarity of line even when subjected to the echoes of a Baroque Hall is one of the most important qualities of all Baroque instruments.
This record presents four concertos of greatly varying character from Telemann's instrumental output, which is so vast that it still can hardly be contemplated in its entirety. The abundance of forms and structures concealed under the collective title "Concerto" in these works is no mere manifestation of inexactitude in contemporary terminology, but far rather an example of Telemann's wealth of ideas which cannot be forced into any set pattern of categories, styles and forms. All the fullness and restlessness of its age are captured here - the age of transition from the baroque to the early classical, in the prolific output of a great personality embracing and assimilating all the trends of that age.
The "Concerto for Recorder and Bassoon" is a genuine "Italian" concerto, though in the order of its movements a church sonata. But even this feature is immediately modified in that the first movement is enlarged into a big Italian concerto movement which, in its solo episodes, subtly exploits all the attractive sounds arising from the combination of two such strongly constrasted instruments. It is followed by a robust Allegro in concerto style which, in the repetition of the first main section and the development-like character of the middle section (with highly virtuoso solo parts) anticipates elements of the classical sonata. An elegiac Grave ist then followed by an unusually earnest and strictly worked fugato Finale.
The "Concerto à 4 Violini Concertati" is one of a small group of four "concertante" sonatas for four violins which Telemann may have written for the Frankfort Collegium Musicum of which he was director (1712-1721). The form is again that of the baroque church sonata: a short Largo, in which an elegiac cantilena rises above staccato suspension chords, is followed by a fugato Allegro, a thirteen-bar adagio cadenza and a vigorously gay 3/8 final dance based on powerful unison signal motifs. The craftsmanship of the strict four-part writing, the use of four solo instruments of equal status, the traditions of the baroque trio and quartet sonata (though without continuo) and the distinctive and attractive sound quality of the high-lying solo violin parts have here entered into a peculiar and highly attractive symbiosis.
Another blend of greatly differing traditions, though of quite another kind, can be found in the "Concerto for 2 Horns and String Orchestra", the latter being without violas, i. e. its middle register. The formal plan of a French overture (suite) is here blended with the contrasted principle of an Italian concerto. The first movement corresponds formally to the traditional opening movements of the overture (slow introduction in dotted rhythms and quick main section, both repeated), but the introduction already changes the traditional character of the movement through little interjected horn signals, while the Allegro completely replaces the usual "fugato" with a purely Italian concerto movement in which the gay signal motifs and tone colour of the horns evoke an udyllic, cheerful hunting atmosphere. The second movement is, in its forms, a French "rondeau", but in its character it is a unique piece of stylized folk music: over sustained bagpipe basses rises a completely "unbaroque", rambling melody, entrusted alternately to the violins and the horns, which seems to have been directly borrowed from French folk music. Its gentle rustic mood and its amazing "timelessness" make this an incomparable beautiful movement. It is followed by a solemn Sarabande, now again quite in "courtly" French style, and two tiny, elegant little final dances (minuet and bourrée).
The "Concerto for 3 Oboes, 3 Violins and Continuo" stands, like the Concerto for 4 Violins, on the border-line between concerto and chamber music. On the concerto side there is the three-movement formal plan, the energetic idiom and, particularly in the outer movements, the fullness of the sound; on the chamber music side there is a mearging of the concerto's alternation between groups of instruments (oboes against violins) into a thoroughly worked-out, frequently polyphonic part-writing with lively development of motifs, in which both the instrumental groups and the individual parts within them compete with one another on an equal footing or combine to form ever-changing new groups. Despite all its complexity, this work is very concise and therefore all the more dense in its texture; yet its sound never becomes arid, thanks to Telemann's ever-present qualities of musicianly élan, wealth of ideas and the subtle imagination in sound of a master who was, at the same time, a man of keen artistic intelligence and a afull-blooded musician.