Florilegium, the English early music ensemble founded by flutist
Ashley Solomon in 1991, has been picking up the pace since the turn of the century occasioned some changes in personnel. Although the fortunes of the early music movement have been kind of up and down in the meantime,
Florilegium has remained a constant, releasing at least one disc per year on the Channel Classics label and touring round the world. The 2005 release Bolivian Baroque was a gamble that has paid off handsomely in good reviews and renewed interest in the group. Subsequently,
Florilegium has resumed, and with this volume presumably completes, its series of Georg Philipp Telemann's Paris Quartets, begun in 1999 when
Florilegium was an almost completely different group.
Those who love Telemann will be pleased that
Florilegium waited, as these performances are about as ideal as possible for the Paris Quartets. Leader
Kati Debretzeni's violin seamlessly intertwines with
Solomon's Baroque flute in ensemble passages, and the pacing provided by the continuo is just right. While the group never strays far, if at all, from expected Baroque performance practice, there is nothing cold or mathematical about
Florilegium's rendering of the Telemann -- it is conceived with the maximum emotional response in mind. Just listen to the "Modéré" movement within the Quatour No. 6 in E minor and you'll be hooked -- it is a moving interpretation, sort of like experiencing a cool, light rainstorm from the front porch at night.
Florilegium's responsiveness to the pastoral and naturalistic tendencies in Telemann's music helps it speak with an eloquence that it clearly has, yet remains invisible on the printed page. That is what made the Paris Quartets so enormously popular in their day; playable by amateurs, and most of the people able to shell out for such a publication were aristocratic amateurs at that, but still containing a spark of inspiration that raised the nature of the music above the combined abilities of the players.
Florilegium has captured that very quality, and the DSD Super Audio CD has radiant sound that will place the group right in the living room. If you are someone who loves Baroque music but "hates" Telemann, this disc is good enough to turn you around. Nonetheless,
Florilegium's Telemann: Paris Quartets, Vol. 3, should be sought out by anyone who has an interest in high-quality chamber music playing at its finest -- one wonders if it is humanly possible for it to be better than this.