A crate of flowers, which experts assure me are very choice and of admirable rarity: Ensemble Hesperi's crowdfunder for their disc themed on Telemann's love of gardening

Peterstrasse in Hamburg (reconstructed in the 1960s) and the location for Telemann's house
Photo via the Telemann Museum

In 1754, Handel wrote a letter to Telemann (who since 1721 had been music director in Hamburg). In it Handel talks about sending Telemann 'a crate of flowers, which experts assure me are very choice and of admirable rarity', and earlier in the letter he makes reference to Telemann's passion for exotic flowers.

It is a chatty, genial letter, and worth bearing in mind that the two composers could hardly have met for around 40 years, and it seems that a strong bond had been formed between the two back in their student days in Leipzig. And whilst music director of Hamburg opera, Telemann would mount productions of Handel's operas.

The exotic flowers never arrived, because the sea captain who acted as courier heard a (false) rumour that Telemann was dead. When Handel ascertained that Telemann was still alive, Handel sent him a replacement set of plants, based on a list of Telemann's requirements, and possibly chosen from the Chelsea Physick Garden. 

It seems that Handel wasn't the only composer who Telemann wrote to about his plants, and Johann Gottlieb Graun too sent him specimens from Berlin where Graun was in the service of Crown Prince Frederick (later Frederick the Great). And Telemann declared in one letter to another friend: 'I am insatiable where hyacinths and tulips are concerned, greedy for ranunculi, and especially for anemones’

Telemann and his passion for his garden is the theme for the new CD from Ensemble Hesperi (Magdalena Loth-Hill, Baroque violin, Mary-Jannet Leith, recorders, Florence Pitt, Baroque cello, Thomas Allery, harpsichord). This will be the ensemble's second CD, following their debut, Full of the Highland Humours [see my review]. 

The new disc, A Gift for your Garden will be appearing on BIS records and will feature music by Telemann, including one of his Paris Quartets and a solo flute fantasia, Handel and Graun, along with three of Scottish composer James Oswald's floral airs.

Read more and support Ensemble Hesperi via their Crowdfunding page.