Telemann at Home

In 1727, the clever Hamburg publisher Georg Philipp Telemann transferred a strategy that had been successful in the world of opera over to church music: the separate publication of select arias from a larger work for domestic use. The Telemann expert Thomas Fritzsch, who attracted worldwide attention in 2016 through the rediscovery of the long-forgotten 12 Fantaisies pour la Basse de Violle par Telemann, has conceived nine home devotions using this selection of arias. Taking Telemann’s model, the home devotions are instrumented clearly and diversely and are compiled for pleasurable listening under the title of Telemann at Home. He performs together the bass-baritone and Telemann Prize winner Klaus Mertens, the lutenist Stefan Maass and Gewandhaus organist Michael Schönheit on the Amalien-Orgel, which had been formerly played upon by Telemann’s godson Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.