CONCERTO IN D MAJOR

Anthony Halstead, Christian Rutherford, Raul Diaz (horns), Simon Standage (violin) & Collegium Musicum 90

Telemann:
 Grillen-Symphonie
 Overture (Suite) TWV 55:F11 in F major for 4 horns, 2 oboes, 2 violins & b.c. 'Alster'
 Concerto TWV 54:D2 in D major for 3 horns, violin, strings & b.c.  
 Overture (Suite) TWV 55:C5 in C major 'La Bouffonne'

"This release shows Telemann at his most irrepressibly good-humoured and imaginative.
There's a concerto for three rattling horns and a solo violin (a splendid sound, with the horns recorded at what seems like the ideal distance), and an elegant suite for strings which sounds like Handel, Bach and a few French composers all thrown in together. More striking, though, is the most substantial piece on the disc, the Alster Echo Overture-Suite, a nine-movement work for strings, oboes and horns full of tricks and surprises occasioned by a host of representative titles. Thus 'Hamburg Carillons' brings us horns imitating bells, 'Concerto of Frogs and Crows' has some mischievously scrunchy wrong notes, and in 'Alster Echo' there's a complex network of echoes between oboes and horns. But the showstealer is the Grillen-Symphonie ('Cricket Symphony'). This is a work for the gloriously silly scoring of piccolo, alto chalumeau, oboe, violins, viola, and two double basses, a somewhat Stravinskian combination that you're unlikely to encounter every day. But it's not just the instrumentation that's irresistibly odd. There's a slow movement with curious, melancholy woodwind interventions a little reminiscent of Harold inItaly, and a finale which is quite a hoot."
Gramophone Classical Music Guide - 2010