The vibrant “Telemann Paris Quartets” are to be celebrated in this third program of the 2024 Salish Sea Early Music Festival featuring violinist David Greenberg, harpsichordist Elisabeth Wright, viola da gambist Susie Napper and baroque flutist Jeffrey Cohan. One of the most prolific and influential composers of all time, Georg Philipp Telemann’s “Paris Quartets” were written for and during his most significant journey away from home during his lifetime.
Presented in collaboration with the Orcas Adventist Fellowship Church, the concert will take place on Wednesday, Feb. 28 at 5 p.m. (originally scheduled for Feb. 27) at the Orcas Adventist Fellowship Church at 107 Enchanted Forest Road in Eastsound. Admission is by suggested donation (a free will offering) of $20 to $30. Those 18 & under are free. For more information please see www.salishseafestival.org/orcas. Please see our complete San Juan Islands schedule, and the list of all remaining performances through early July in Eastsound below.
Having been invited by several of the most prominent French musicians to visit Paris, Telemann composed and published the first set of his remarkable “Paris Quartets” in 1730 and finally left Hamburg for Paris seven years later, where all 12 of his new quartets, greatly tailored to the French style, were performed, almost surely with Telemann himself playing harpsichord. The second set of quartets was published during this eight-month stay in Paris in 1738. Two years later Telemann related his experience in Paris:
“The admirable performances of these quartets by Messrs Blavet (transverse flute), Guignon (violin), the younger Forcroy [i.e. Forqueray] (viola da gamba) and Edouard (cello) would be worth describing were it possible for words to be found to do them justice. In short, they won the attention of the ears of the court and the town, and procured for me in a very little time an almost universal renown and increased esteem.”
This program consists of two quartets from his 1730 set entitled “Quadri a violino, flauto traversiere, viola da gamba o violoncello, e fondamento”, and two from the 1738 publication entitled “Nouveaux quatuors en six suites”.
