Around the horn

The concert began with a flourish and a honk. Well, of course it did. Telemann wrote his last Ouverture-Suite in F major for the Landgrave of Darmstadt. The Landgrave loved hunting, and in the 18th century hunting meant horns. And horns mean honks. If you’ve ever played the horn — applied 12 feet of coiled metal tube to your face and tried, through a combination of lip muscles and willpower, to make the damn thing sing — you’ll know that no amount of hoping, praying or practice can prevent the occasional squawk. The two excellent players in Florilegium’s concert at St John’s Smith Square, moreover, were using 18th century-style horns — without the valves and additional plumbing that render the modern beast just about controllable. With a whole evening of Telemann ahead, they got their honk out of the way early, and it sounded glorious.

Because — let’s not pretend otherwise —Telemann does need a bit of roughing-up.