The four "concertos" (they're actually sonatas) presented here are taken from Georg Philipp Telemann's 1734 collection Six Concertos and Six Suites. Recorder player
Anneke Boeke is an ex-member of
Philip Pickett's
New London Consort and frequently plays in recorder duos with
Marion Verbrüggen. As with many Hungaraton discs, the recording is a little on the thin side, but that becomes a negligible consideration when you hear the fine playing on this disc and as your sense of awareness awakens to what high quality works these are. Telemann: Concertos for Recorder & Harpsichord does deliver the goods -- both the musicianship and the music is of the highest caliber here.
The cover trumpets this as a "first recording," and in a sense, it is: Telemann's original publication was designed in a manner that makes four different instrumental combinations possible. This would be the first recording of the version for solo recorder and keyboard; the others would be for flute, keyboard, and cello; flute, violin, and cello; or flute violin, cello, and harpsichord. So Telemann's Six Concertos and Six Suites could be exponentially expanded to 48 works through the application of such standards. As all of these "concertos" have been recorded in some of the alternative versions, so in a sense this really isn't a "first recording" after all. But that's splitting hairs, and doesn't depreciate from what a fine job
Anneke Boeke and
Miklós Spányi do interpreting these little-known masterworks.