Telemann: Recorder Sonatas

Over the past decades, Dan Laurin has established himself as one of the most interesting recorder players of our time. His more than 30 critically acclaimed releases on BIS range from a seminal 9-disc set of van Eyck's Der Fluyten Lust-hof to contemporary concertos. The first recordings Laurin made for the label were of duets by Georg Philipp Telemann, and since then he has returned to the composer several times, recording chamber music and concertos. It is only now that he has set the complete sonatas on disc, however – works that he describes in his liner notes as forming part of most recorder players’ ‘musical DNA’. Performing them here with his regular chamber music partners Anna Paradiso and Mats Olofsson, Laurin revels in the wide technical and emotional scope of the sonatas as well as their stylistic diversity. In the C major sonata TWV 41:C5 Telemann looks backwards as he pays tribute to his illustrious forerunner Corelli, while the Empfindsamkeit of the Affettuoso of the D minor sonata is very much of its time – and throughout the collection there are traces of composer’s fascination for Polish folk music.