Telemann was sometimes censured by contemporary critics for his inclination towards pictorialism and his whole-hearted endorsement and application of the French style. Nowadays we revel in Telemann’s Enlightenment outlook and his deft musical portrayal of characters and events. One piece which demonstrates this is the suite Burlesque de Quixotte in G major for strings. The celebrated Spanish satirical romance Don Quioxte de la Mancha by Cervantes was one of the most widely read books of fiction in Europe. Stimulated no doubt by his keen interest in the literary world around him,Telemann was drawn to the absurd adventures of the would-be knight errant, basing two works on episodes from the romance. The earlier of them was the overture-suite on this disc.

The music of the suite is of a consistently high quality and deserves to be considered among Telemann’s finest achievements in suite form. It contains a series of skilfully drawn vignettes which depict, in all but the overture itself, specific adventures and emotional responses in the tale.

The two remaining overture-suites on the disc provide us with particularly fine examples of Telemann’s fluent and imaginative handling of the form. In each case, the overtures themselves are skilfully crafted and sustained throughout by fresh musical ideas.

The Concerto in D major affords a pleasing, if modest example of Telemann’s skill in blending the sounds of instruments from disparate families. Here the protagonists are two violins and a bassoon.The lyricism, harmonic warmth and melodic tenderness of the Adagio are of a kind which so readily endeared Telemann to his French musical contemporaries.