By Karen Allendoerfer: Do you ever get a sense of deja vu in music? Like you've been down this road before? And not just because of the repeats!![DelftViolinsGY]()
Much of my spring was occupied with preparing the Telemann viola concerto in G major for the South Bay Philharmonic's concert on May 11th. It was the first time I had played a solo concerto with an orchestra. (I had had a small concertmaster solo several years ago with the Arlington Philharmonic, which was technically my first solo with orchestra, but that wasn't a concerto).
After the performance I went on vacation to Europe for a month. My husband is German and we visited our friends and family there, as well as going on a British Isles cruise. I'm back now and looking forward to a summer chamber music concert this Sunday, in which I'll be playing . . . uh . . . a Telemann viola concerto in G major.
Yep. Did you know there was more than one? Telemann also wrote a double viola concerto, and it's quite charming and very different from the concerto for one viola that more people know. A friend from the viola section of the SBP and I have the same viola teacher, and she put us up to learning it this summer.
This is one of my favorite recordings of the piece on YouTube, for several reasons. I especially like the energy level of viola 1, but I also like viola 2's different, calmer approach. They are great foils for one another. Also, this version is only 7-and-a-half minutes long, all 4 movements. There is something about the essence of the concerto being distilled into less than 8 minutes that really appeals to me. You can try to blame modern attention spans, I suppose, but this piece was composed around 1740.
Interestingly, it was originally scored for two "violettas," and it was composed shortly after Telemann returned from France. At least two of the movements have French titles. Read this paper from the American Viola Society to learn more. We'll just be using two modern violas, with a cello continuo (my 15-yo son).![Chamber_Music_Concert]()
Much of my spring was occupied with preparing the Telemann viola concerto in G major for the South Bay Philharmonic's concert on May 11th. It was the first time I had played a solo concerto with an orchestra. (I had had a small concertmaster solo several years ago with the Arlington Philharmonic, which was technically my first solo with orchestra, but that wasn't a concerto).
After the performance I went on vacation to Europe for a month. My husband is German and we visited our friends and family there, as well as going on a British Isles cruise. I'm back now and looking forward to a summer chamber music concert this Sunday, in which I'll be playing . . . uh . . . a Telemann viola concerto in G major.