Flora incognita

Adornment, beauty, pleasure of the senses: music and flowers often seem to speak the same language. The composer Georg Philipp Telemann possessed not only immense creative energy but also a proven green thumb, indulging his passion for flowers in his Baroque garden in Hamburg: “I confess, therefore, to my insatiable appetite for hyacinths and tulips, my passion for ranunculi and especially anemones.”

Into these musically fragrant realms ventures the Yara Ensemble, winners of the 2025 special prize “Music and Space” at the göttingen händel competition. In their concert program Flora incognita, the amateur gardener Telemann encounters kindred spirits – when, for instance, his contemporary Handel extols the flaming rose as one of God’s marvels, or the Scotsman James Oswald dedicates small musical tributes to the snowdrop and the lily.