Between Breath and Strings

Between Breath and Strings: German baroque concerto for recorder, viola da gamba and harpsichord

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This programme invites us into the refined and multifaceted sound world of the German Baroque, a moment in which musical language achieves a rare balance between intellectual architecture and expressive immediacy. At its centre lies a dialogue between styles,instruments, and affects, embodied in the works of Georg Philipp Telemann,Johann Sebastian Bach, and Johann Gottlieb Graun, three composers who, each in his own way, navigate the tension between tradition and innovation.

Telemann’s Ouverture-Suite in A minor unfolds as asynthesis of European musical styles, rooted in the French overture tradition yet infused with Italian spontaneity and rhetorical vitality. In movements suchas Les Plaisirs and Air à l’Italien, refined courtly elegance gives way to a more immediate and expressive language, revealing Telemann’s extraordinary ability to transform stylistic contrasts into a unified musicaldiscourse.

Graun’s Concerto for viola da gamba leads us into amore introspective world. Written at a moment when the instrument was already fading from prominence, the work possesses a sense of fragile persistence. Its central Adagio unfolds like an intimate confession, where the viola da gamba seems almost to sing, suspended between melancholy and tenderness.

In Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto in A major, the keyboard emerges as a true protagonist. Beneath the architectural clarity and rhythmic energy of the outer movements lies the lyrical heart of the Larghetto,where the harpsichord transcends its percussive nature to achieve an almost vocal expressivity.

The programme culminates in Telemann’s Concerto for recorder and viola da gamba, a meditation on contrast and complementarity. The luminous agility of the recorder and the darker, introspective sonority of the viola da gamba engage in a dialogue of remarkable subtlety, particularly in the suspended intimacy of the “Dolce” movement.

More than a succession of works, this programme offers a continuous exploration of musical identity: between national styles, between public brilliance and private expression, between structural clarity and emotional depth. It is precisely within this delicate balance that the German Baroque finds its most profound voice.

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Rodrigo Calveyra

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