Featured Album August 2026: Erik Bosgraaf & filoBarocco "Folk Baroque"

This month sees the return of Recorder31, our month-long celebration of the recorder with new features and promotions every day throughout August. Fitting, then, to choose a recorder album as this month’s Featured Album – although, calling this simply a recorder album is to do it something of an injustice. Reimagining the music of Telemann’s Rostock Manuscript, Erik Bosgraaf teams up with Italian trio filoBarocco to create a new take on both genres mentioned in the album’s title. It’s the work of four musicians unafraid to innovate – read on to find out more about why we love it…

Folk Baroque
Erik Bosgraaf & filoBarocco

OUR FEATURED ALBUM FOR AUGUST 2026

Click here to order now!

----

From the artist's press release:

When Baroque Meets Folk Energy: In ‘folk baroque’, the music of Georg Philipp Telemann encounters the vibrant dance traditions of central Europe. The program grew out of a collaboration between recorder virtuoso Erik Bosgraaf and the Italian ensemble filoBarocco during the Göttingen International Handel Festival, initiated within the European support programme EEEMERGING+. At the heart of the project lies the fascinating Rostock Manuscript, a historical source long associated with Telemann’s fascination with Central European folk traditions. For Bosgraaf and filoBarocco, the manuscript offers the perfect point of departure for exploring the meeting ground between Baroque repertoire and living folk music traditions. The ensemble shares a deep enthusiasm not only for historical performance practice but also for music that retains the energy, spontaneity, and expressive freedom of traditional dance music.

------

Why The Early Music Shop loves "Folk Baroque":

This is not an album of baroque music. Nor is it an album of folk music. And yet somehow, it manages to be both, and many other things besides.

‘Folk Baroque’ is recorder virtuoso Erik Bosgraaf’s second album in as many years dedicated to the music of Georg Philip Telemann, but where last year’s chamber music release stuck to the traditional format (see our Featured Album blog from May 2025), this time Telemann’s contributions are merely a stimulus. What follows is a four-part suite presenting a radical, cross-genre approach unlike anything Bosgraaf has recorded to date.

Teaming up with Italian ensemble filoBarocco, Bosgraaf and his collaborators reimagine and reinterpret music from the so-called Rostock Manuscript, compiled by Telemann and consisting mostly of melodies like Polonaises (a three-time dance originating in Poland). From the very start, it’s clear that this has been a collective process in which no one musician or instrument is more important than the others. The instrumentation (recorder, lute, violin and cello) inevitably means early music sound-worlds are never far away, but there is far more to this album as its 73-minute programme runs its course.

Dividing the programme into four ‘acts’, there is an energy and playfulness to the performance that rings out from the first note. The opening piece draws the listener in with a more familiar baroque bassline, but punchy, accented chords quickly hint at wider influences. For a programme based almost entirely on one dance tune structure, the Polonaise, there is a huge amount of variety, from rousing, driving melodies, to dreamlike sounds.

The skill of these musicians is in no question – the occasional use of extended techniques demonstrates the remarkable potential of their instruments and adds to the drama of the programme, but the more ‘conventional’ performances also ooze style and assertion. Towards the end of the second act, some unexpected vocals and percussive sounds from their instruments provide yet more interest and one of the folkiest flavours of the album. This also contrasts with the next piece, opening the third act with the longest track, where for much of the arrangement, the melody is accompanied by a simple drone. The stillness of this track offers one of the album’s highlights, where the powerful recorder and violin melody needs very little embellishment.

The beauty of this being a speculative programme is that there is no precedent or preconception of how the music should be played, allowing the individual, and collective, voices of this remarkable ensemble to come to the fore. Furthermore, the minimalist album packaging with striking images, but an absence of sleeve notes, allows the listener to conjure their own story and add to the creative nature of the programme.

This hugely theatrical performance translates well into the recorded format and one certainly hopes this is not the last time Erik Bosgraaf and filoBarocco meet. Fans of folk, baroque, contemporary, chamber, and even popular music will find something to discover in this music. Highly recommended.

---

Folk Baroque is available from The Early Music Shop online or in-store!