Ton Koopman 80th Birthday Celebrations
Soloists of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Ton Koopman
Wigmore Hall, 29 November 2024

Ton Koopman and a pocket-sized version of his Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra came to the Wigmore Hall as part of his extended 80th Birthday Celebrations. The main touring programme of the celebration year has been a new version of Handel’s Esther, which I don’t think ever came to the UK, but this was a less ambitious programme of music by the prolific Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767) performed by six soloists from his orchestra.

Telemann has had a mixed press, usually being unfairly compared to Bach. Although they were friends, with Telemann acting as godfather of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, their musical styles are substantially different. Six years younger than Bach, and outliving him by around 17 years, Telemann was composing in the Galant style, much of which was closer to the music of Bach’s sons than to Bach himself. Born in 1681 in Magdeburg, his early studies in Zellerfeld and Hildesheim were followed by a youthful spell in Leipzig, initially to study law, but where he also made a strong impression as a musician, becoming director of the Opernhaus auf dem Brühl and music director at the Neukirche. He left Leipzig aged 24 for a brief period in Poland and then in Eisenach, Bach’s birthplace before settling in Frankfurt as the city music director. His final move was to Hamburg as music director of the principal city churches and Kantor of the Johanneum Lateinschule. He stayed for some 45 years until he died in 1767.

This concert represented a wide range of Telemann’s music in the form of Trio and instrumental Sonatas and Quartets drawn from publications from the years around 1730. The soloists from Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra were Catherine Manson violin, Reine-Marie Verhagen recorder, Kristen Huebner traverso flute, Antoine Torunczyk oboe, Wouter Verschuren bassoon, and Robert Smith gamba with Ton Koopman playing harpsichord. Clearly well used to playing together, they produced an excellent consort sound in their various combinations, although the rather overpowering oboe was an occasional distraction. Andrew Frampton’s detailed programme notes (on the reverse of the rather meagre A4 programme leaflet) described the varying style of the different pieces and movements, noting Telemann’s role in the developing “mixed taste” which combined elements of French, Italian and Polish musical styles.

As it was a celebration of his birthday, it is perhaps churlish for me to comment on Ton Koopman’s continuo harpsichord playing but, nonetheless, I will. Not surprisingly, it was in a very Ton Koopman style of what is normally considered to be a backseat supporting role of continuo playing, with frequent embellishments, added melodic lines that risked turning trios into quartets and quartets into quintets, and a dominant playing style that threatened both the role of the other soloists and, at times, the harpsichord itself. But the packed audience loved every moment, either because they were used to the Koopman style, or because they hadn’t read the treatises on continuo playing.

I have often mentioned that Telemann suffers from having written so much music, making it difficult to recall specific pieces, but hadn’t realised until I read Andrew Frampton’s notes that a 19th-century writer had made a very similar comment, noting that Telemann “would have been greater had it not been so easy for him to write so unspeakably much”. What could have been Telemann’s response, had he been alive to have made it, was quoted at the end of the programme notes. His Quartets were complimented by Quantz to which he responded “I have endeavoured to present something for everyone’s taste.” Indeed he did.

Trio Sonata in D minor for recorder, violin and continuo TWV42:d7
Trio Sonata in G minor for oboe, violin and continuo TWV42:g5
Sonata in F minor for bassoon and continuo TWV41:f1
Trio Sonata in F for violin, viola da gamba and continuo TWV42:F10
Quartet in D minor for recorder, traverso, bassoon and continuo from Tafelmusik II TWV43:d1
Trio Sonata in C for recorder, traverso and continuo TWV42:C1
Quartet in G for traverso, oboe, violin and continuo TWV43:G2
Trio Sonata in F for recorder, viola da gamba and continuo TWV42:F3
Quartet in G for recorder, oboe, violin and continuo TWV43:G6