The booklet essay for this complete survey of all six Telemann sonatas for recorder and basso continuo observes correctly that no English-language biography of the composer has ever been published. Perhaps it is still too easy to damn Telemann with faint praise as being merely prolific and charming.

In the extensive biographies of Danish recorder virtuoso Michala Petri and American harpsichordist Anthony Newman, you will find Jarrett, Bernstein, Levine and Abbado mentioned but nobody from America’s early music scene (Newman’s website vaunts him as ‘America’s leading Baroque interpreter’). However, that need not obscure the artistic credentials of these diligently prepared and neatly executed performances of four sonatas from Der getreue Music-Meister (a series of periodicals published 1728 29) and two from the collection Essercizii musici (printed 1740). Petri and Newman deliver full-blooded performances that are appropriately supple, lively or measured as Telemann requires. There are also moments of delicacy such as the Andante of the Sonata in F minor (TWV41:f1), in which Newman uses a lute stop and Petri plays sweetly, and there is the playful spirit of a jig in the Allegro finale of the Sonata in D minor (d4). It could be argued that the occasionally rough-and-ready atmosphere offers a sense of real performances rather than sterilised perfection stitched together from thousands of edits. There could be more secure tuning in the opening Cantabile of the Sonata in C major (C2) but the agile liveliness of Petri’s quick arpeggios in the ensuing Allegro is impressive.