The overtures (suites) on this recording share one feature that distinguishes them from the conventional orchestral music of their day: the scoring for woodwind. As a rule there are two obbligato oboes which play with the first violins, occasionally one with the first and one with the second violins, thus achieving an enhancement of tonal strength and colouring; there is the occasional trio, the two oboes playing little solos with the bass. The bassoon usually has no part specially written for it, but simply plays the cello and double bass line; it might have a solo part when accompanying the oboe solos, though this would not be apparent from the score but was decided ad hoc by the performer. In these pieces Telemann uses a complete woodwind quartet consisting of three oboes and bassoon, thereby maintaining a particular instrumental quality, thethird oboe playing the viola  part insofar as it lies within its compass. This combination of instruments enables the woodwind to alternate with the strings on an equal footing, since both instrumental groups provide a four-part texture. This possibility produces a special style: the dialogue is not now conducted within unified sonorities by alternating motifs and figures, but rather between groups of basically different timbre. With the attitudes then prevailing towards polychoral music, acoustics and sound production. this is bound to mean that the woodwind and strings were physically separated, possibly being provided with several continuo instruments.
Some 20 or 30 years earlier Georg Muffat made some interesting comments and suggestions about the execution of works of this type. He left the distribution of the parts largely to the performers themselves, and described the performance with small forces (omitting the inner parts) and the execution with the largest possible orchestra (which was particularly desirable) in the following terms: “But it you have a larger number of musicians at your disposal you can not only strengthen the first and second violins of the big choir but also, at your discretion, the two middle violas and the bass; in addition, the choir may be embellished by accompanying it with harpsichords, theorbos, harps and similar instruments: the small choir. on the other hand... which is how the word ‘concertino’ is always to be understood, should only be played by your three best fiddlers, accompanied by an organ or a theorbo... ”. He added that these two “choirs” could be placed physically apart from one another; and indeed individual continuo instruments (organ or theorbo) only make sense if this separation does take place.
This is how the Suite in D minor was performed for this recording. In this work the wind group is most consistently set off against the string group and the dialogue is maintained from beginning to end; even in the tutti sections, in which the two choirs play together, the wind instruments are always written in four parts, i.e. not concentrated on the upper parts. On this recording the two choirs are rigorously kept apart; the continuo instrument for the wind choir is an organ and for the string choir a harpsichord. Thus the two groups are truly self-contained.
In the Suite in D, as also in that in C, the woodwind is contrasted with the strings both in timbre and in the concertante writing. It is not, therefore, merely a question of a dialogue between two groups of equal importance (such a dialogue does sometimes occur here, although not as exclusively or as consistently as in the Suite in D minor), but also of an element of concertante playing in which the solo function of the woodwind is emphasized from the outset by the writing in a specifically woodwind idiom. This was by no means the rule in Telemann’s day: at that time oboe parts were rarely different from string parts. The beginning of the Suite in C is characteristic in stressing the unusual: the strings are silent. The effect of hearing a solo group start on its own instead of the expected tutti must have been quite staggering (Mozart describes a similar surprise 50 years later at the first performance of his “Paris” Symphony). In the two suites on this record the woodwind writing is always complete, in the same ways as that for the strings; no parts are ever doubled, but each instrument has a part of its own.
The Suite in G minor is the one that most closely follows the conventions: in the tutti sections the woodwind always plays with the upper parts (the second as well as the first oboe with the first violins, the third oboe with the second violins). The wind texture is in four parts only in the solo sections, or even in three parts, the bass line being omitted from the continuo.
For the present recording we have, therefore, not only arranged the rhythm and articulation of the pieces according to the principles appropriate to the tune at which they were written, but have also related the number and type of continuo instrumets to the texture of the individual works. We have also experimented with their placing for each piece separately, and discovered that in spite of the fact that the four suites are identically scored, the optimum disposition is by no means always the same: rather does each suite require its own arrangement in accordance with the orchestration peculiar to it. We find exactly the same when playing in public. The practical consequence of this is that a complete separation of the choirs, with the two continuo instruments placed at a distance from one another, was required in the Suite in D minor. The Suite in G minor required the least separation, and the Suites in C and D occupied an intermediate position.