CCMusic.com

The new CD by the Capricornus Consort Basel is dedicated to Georg Philipp Telemann - exclusively works for strings in a wide variety of scorings, sometimes with and sometimes without basso continuo. Each of them documents across various creative periods Telemann's fascinating wealth of musical ideas, his adept sense of form and style, his creative approach to tradition and his constant interest in artistic innovation. Added to this is a large pinch of humour, which culminates in the eponymous 'Gulliver's Suite': Telemann sets the adventures of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver on his travels to music in absurd time signatures: The dwarves appear in 3/32nd time with tiny note values up to 128th, the giants can only perform the (otherwise fast) gigue very sedately due to huge note values or Telemann refers to the mathematical interest of the islanders by representing the time signature as a formula. The Capricornus Consort Basel, highly praised for it's subtle and sensitive interpretations and decorated with prizes, allows Telemann's wealth of ideas to shine in a colourful way, which will hopefully convince even the last person who still thinks Telemann is a second-rate prolific writer of the opposite!