3 Concertos for Violin and Orchestra

No fewer than twenty-five violin concertos by Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767) have come down to us over the years - presumably only a fraction of his total output in this geme. But even this corpus, though reduced by time, reveals that Telemann, like other composers of his day, regarded the violin as the most important and most versatile of all solo instruments. Two of his operas - Der neumodische Liebhaber Damon (1719, TWV 21:8) and Die last-tragende Liebe oder Emma und Eginhard (1728, TWY 27:25) - open with introductory violin concertos; there are eight concertos for two violins; and the violin plays an important role in virtually all his concertos for two or more solo instruments.

Of the many concertos Telemann wrote for violin and orchestra, not a single one has found its way into either the standard concert hall programs or violin pedagogy. This unjustified deficit is easy to explain: no reliable performing editions have been available until now. This publication, the first of its kind, fills this gap and gives students and teachers alike the opportunity to become familiar with three concertos from a Baroque master whose inventive compositions for this genre are so rich in form that they point the way from Vivaldi to the Classical solo concerto.