Saturday 12 June 2010
Tune of the Day: Les Plaisirs
from Suite in A minor by Georg Philipp Telemann
The second movement of Telemann's Overture-Suite in A minor is titled “Les Plaisirs”, which is French for “The Pleasures”. The German composer takes the traditional model of introducing a theme in the strings and letting the flute make virtuoso fireworks with it. In fact, the theme is first introduced by the strings alone in a separate movement, and then developed in the following movement, marked “Les Plaisirs II”, where only the flute and the harpsichord appear. The two parts are sometimes considered as a single movement.