The Solo Fantasias

Minuets, sarabands, bourrées, gigues, gavottes, hornpipes and polonaises. Like many other composers, Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767) used dance as a foundation for his compositions and this is no more evident than in his fantasias for flute, where we find several examples. Although the music is written for neither the ballroom, theatre nor opera, references to the baroque French court dance are clear and abundant. The music therefore invites something more than a pure listening experience, also evoking movement and corporeal responses.

Minuets, sarabands, bourrées, gigues, gavottes, hornpipes and polonaises. Like many other composers, Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767) used dance as a foundation for his compositions and this is no more evident than in his fantasias for flute, where we find several examples. Although the music is written for neither the ballroom, theatre nor opera, references to the baroque French court dance are clear and abundant.

Soliloquy: An act of speaking your thoughts aloud, oblivious to any listeners. For acclaimed Australian recorder virtuoso Genevieve Lacey, Telemann’s twelve Fantasias for solo flute have long had an intensely personal connection. As a teenager she was obsessed with a famous recording by the legendary Frans Bruggen, and performed the first fantasia of the set at her cousin’s funeral - the only thing she could think of to ease all that family pain.

The third installment in Anneke Scott’s series of works by the French natural horn player and composer Jacques-François Gallay presents a thrilling programme of operatic fantasias & songs. These fascinating and unique works mix incredibly virtuosic music with beautifully lyrical melodies deeply influenced by Gallay’s position as solo horn of the Parisian Théâtre Italien. For this final volume in the series, Scott is joined by the celebrated pianist Steven Devine and renowned soprano Lucy Crowe. In this recording, Anneke Scott performs on a natural horn (cor solo) by Marcel-Auguste Raoux dating from 1823 (Loaned with kind permission by the Bate Collection, University of Oxford), while plays a grand piano by Érard, from 1851. (Loaned with kind permission by the University of Birmingham).

As Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach published successive collections of the Kenner und Liebhaber series, he explored new genres and styles. In the second collection he added his idiosyncratic rondos, and in the fourth he included free fantasias. The fifth collection, composed between 1779 and 1784, contains no new genres, but displays more variety in terms of textures and thematic ideas than any of the previous volumes. In fact, Bachs preoccupation with variation is almost obsessive it is as if he cannot finish phrases without varying either texture, tonality, rhythmic pulse or dynamics.

As Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach published successive collections of the Kenner und Liebhaber series, he explored new genres and styles. In the second collection he added his idiosyncratic rondos, and in the fourth he included free fantasias. The fifth collection, composed between 1779 and 1784, contains no new genres, but displays more variety in terms of textures and thematic ideas than any of the previous volumes. In fact, Bach’s preoccupation with variation is almost obsessive – it is as if he cannot finish phrases without varying either texture, tonality, rhythmic pulse or dynamics.

Issued between 1779 and 1787, the six collections of sonatas, rondos, and fantasias “für Kenner und Liebhaber” constitute Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s largest-scale publishing venture. Aimed at ‘Connaisseurs and Amateurs’, the first collection was a retrospective selection of six sonatas but when this became a commercial success Bach expanded and varied the scheme, adding rondos (a recently popular form) for the second and third collection and, in the final three collections, samples of his free fantasies.

On this amply filled album, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s Clavierstücke verschiedener Art (Keyboard Pieces of various Kinds) is presented in its entirety, with the exception of three songs for voice and keyboard. This collection is the most diverse of Bach’s publications and includes multi-movement genres, a free fantasia, a learned fugue, and various short pieces of varying degrees of difficulty. The variety suggests that Bach did not want for his keyboard music to be strictly divided into ‘light’ and ‘serious’ pieces.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach published the first collection in his series 'for Connaisseurs and Amateurs' in 1779, at the age of 65, and the sixth and final in 1787, a year before his death. Throughout the series he continues to develop the three genres which are featured in it – sonata, rondo and fantasia.