Telemann: Sinfonia TWV 50:1 in G major 'Grillen-Symphonie', etc.

"This release shows Telemann at his most irrepressibly good-humoured and imaginative.
There's a concerto for three rattling horns and a solo violin (a splendid sound, with the horns recorded at what seems like the ideal distance), and an elegant suite for strings which sounds like Handel, Bach and a few French composers all thrown in together. More striking, though, is the most substantial piece on the disc, the Alster Echo Overture-Suite, a nine-movement work for strings, oboes and horns full of tricks and surprises occasioned by a host of representative titles. Thus 'Hamburg Carillons' brings us horns imitating bells, 'Concerto of Frogs and Crows' has some mischievously scrunchy wrong notes, and in 'Alster Echo' there's a complex network of echoes between oboes and horns. But the showstealer is the Grillen-Symphonie ('Cricket Symphony').
This is a work for the gloriously silly scoring of piccolo, alto chalumeau, oboe, violins, viola, and two double basses, a somewhat Stravinskian combination that you're unlikely to encounter every day. But it's not just the instrumentation that's irresistibly odd. There's a slow movement with curious, melancholy woodwind interventions a little reminiscent of Harold in Italy, and a finale which is quite a hoot." Gramophone