Telemann 12 Fantasias for Solo Violin Iryna Gintova (violin) Orchid Classics ORC100171 71:04 mins
After his appointment in 1721 as Hamburg’s music director, Telemann began to assemble a wide variety of his compositions to be issued under his own supervision. Among them were three sets of fantasias for unaccompanied flute (c1732), unaccompanied violin (1735) and the recently uncovered ones for viola da gamba (1735).
While never approaching the complexity or dimensions of Bach’s music for unaccompanied violin Telemann’s Fantaisies nevertheless require advanced technique to reveal their subtle colours and varied humours. Multiple stopping is frequently called for and, generally speaking, the implied harmonies make the term Fantaisie an apt one. Iryna Gintova plays a contemporarily strung violin at today’s concert pitch enlivening the music with expressive warmth and stylistic propriety. In her own short introduction Gintova expresses her affection for these pieces, their beauty, their charm and their unpredictability. Certainly, she reaches the heart of the music with unaffected grace, while at the same time making sharply defined contrasts between playful dance rhythms and stricter Baroque disciplines. These contrasts are distinctively presented in the A major and E minor Fantaisies. Telemann intended that it should be so, counterpoint dominating the first six Fantaisies, dance metres assuming greater prominence in the remaining six.
Nicholas Anderson