A New Album of Telemann’s Solo Violin Music

courtesy of Naxos of America

About a month ago Navona Records released a new album of the complete set of twelve fantasias for solo violin composed by Georg Philipp Telemann. There is, of course, the usual tendency to associate the solo violin repertoire from the Baroque period is Johann Sebastian Bach. Ironically, when the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig had to appoint a successor to Thomaskantor Johann Kuhnau after his death in 1722, the church administrators initially offered the position to Telemann. However, Telemann was more interested in a secular appointment in Hamburg; and the Leipzig position was offered to Bach. The rest, as they say, is history.

While Bach’s reputation advanced through his service to the church, Telemann was basically beholden to a “free city” administered by the merchant guilds of the Hanseatic League. In that setting he realized that he could become a prosperous capitalist through the publication of his music. One of those publications was the collection of those twelve fantasias, which appeared for sale in 1735 and are now listed as TWV 40:14–25 in the Telemann-Werke-Verzeichnis (Telemann Works Catalogue).

The fantasias themselves are multiple-movement compositions, four in four movements and all of the others in three movements. When compared with the collection of six sonatas and partitas for solo violin by Bach (BWV 1001–1006), the durations of Telemann’s movements are practically microscopic. However, it is likely that both collections were composed for pedagogical purposes. Thus, one will encounter as much polyphony in Telemann as one expects from Bach; and five of the fantasias include fugues.

The violinist on this new album in Thomas Bowes. His Wikipedia page makes it clear that he is not one of the flag-bearers for the “HIP” (Historically Informed Performance) set. Indeed, prior to this new release, he is probably best known for a recording of the violin concertos by William Walton and Samuel Barber. Nevertheless, his account of the Telemann fantasias is definitely an engaging one. His command of the many technical challenges is consistently secure enough that he can endow each individual movement with its own rhetorical expressiveness. The result is an engaging journey of discovery; and, while Telemann probably never expected that anyone would ever want to listen to all twelve of his fantasias played back-to-back, the one-hour account of Bowes’ performances of the full canon is consistently engaging.