Salish Sea Early Music Festival presents Telemann’s ‘Paris Quartets’
Published 1:30 am Thursday, April 16, 2026
Submitted by the Salish Sea Early Music Festival.
Telemann’s brilliant “Paris Quartets” are to be celebrated in this fifth program of the 2026 Salish Sea Early Music Festival, featuring contemporary virtuoso period instrument specialists, including violinist David Greenberg, harpsichordist Elisabeth Wright, viola da gambist Susie Napper and baroque flutist Jeffrey Cohan. One of the most prolific and influential composers of all time, Georg Philipp Telemann’s “Paris Quartets” were written for the great Parisian virtuosos of the early 18th century and prompted his most significant journey away from home during his lifetime.
This concert, presented in collaboration with Grace Church, takes place on Saturday evening, April 25, at 6 p.m. at Grace Episcopal Church at 70 Sunset Lane (just north of Lopez Village) on Lopez Island. Admission is by a suggested donation (a free-will offering) of $20 to $30. Those 18 and under are free. All are welcome regardless of donation. For additional information, please see www.salishseafestival.org/lopez.
About Telemann’s “Paris Quartets”
Having been invited by several of the most prominent French musicians to visit Paris, Telemann composed and published the first set of his remarkable “Paris Quartets” in 1730 and finally left Hamburg for Paris seven years later, where all 12 of his new quartets, greatly tailored to the French style, were performed, almost surely with Telemann himself playing harpsichord. The second set of quartets was published during this eight-month stay in Paris in 1738. Two years later, Telemann related his experience in Paris:
“The admirable performances of these quartets by Messrs Blavet (transverse flute), Guignon (violin), the younger Forcroy [i.e. Forqueray] (viola da gamba) and Edouard (cello) would be worth describing were it possible for words to be found to do them justice. In short, they won the attention of the ears of the court and the town, and procured for me in a very little time an almost universal renown and increased esteem.”
This program consists of two quartets from his 1730 set titled “Quadri a violino, flauto traversiere, viola da gamba o violoncello, e fondamento,” and two from the 1738 publication titled “Nouveaux quatuors en six suit
