This program offers an alternative and reflective approach to the work of Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767), one of the most versatile composers of the Baroque era. Under the title “Broken quartets & Vows”, we not only revisit the formal construction of his music, but also explore the aesthetic boundaries between what is established and what is imagined, between the canonical and the free.

The core of the program centers on Telemann’s quartets in suite form—a genre in which he displayed remarkable originality by blending French, Italian, and German stylistic influences with exceptional fluency. Rather than performing an entire suite as originally conceived, we have selected individual movements from various suites and reorganized them to form new suites. This practice, common in the Baroque era but somewhat neglected today, responds to a historically grounded logic of formal flexibility and highlights the modular and expressive character of each movement. It is a curatorial exercise in sound, through which we uncover new musical narratives from preexisting materials.

This recompositional process is intertwined with solo Fantasias—works that, in both name and conception, embrace freedom and spontaneity—and with improvised preludes interspersed throughout the program. Improvisation was a regular component of Baroque performance practice, especially at the beginning of pieces or sections, and it remains a distinctive feature of our ensemble. These preludes not only serve as connective tissue between the program’s blocks, but also allow for a direct interaction with the acoustic space and the immediacy of the moment, reasserting the creative role of the performer as a continuator of the Baroque compositional spirit.

The title “Suite of Sin” invites multiple layers of interpretation. On one hand, it refers to the conscious act of reorganizing Telemann’s original movements, thereby transgressing the composer’s prescribed order. On another, it evokes the inherent liberty of the fantasia and improvisation. Finally, it alludes more subtly to a biographical episode: the personal tensions in Telemann’s life, particularly his troubled relationship with his wife, Maria Catharina Textor, who amassed significant debts due to her gambling addiction. This situation severely impacted the composer’s emotional and financial stability, adding a human and contradictory dimension to the artist’s figure—an artist whose work embodies an extraordinary capacity for invention in the face of adversity.