Paolo Pandolfo - Telemann: Fantasias for Viola da gamba (2017)

With his new recording of Telemann’s Fantasias Paolo Pandolfo is continuing to take the viola da gamba in directions little chartered previously. After his Kind of Satie release, Pandolfo once again demonstrates his musical versatility – whether he is drawing from the within the established gamba repertory or from beyond it. Here, Pandolfo delves into the astonishingly prolific instrumental output of Georg Philipp Telemann, a composer so well-versed in the musical diversity of his time that he was more than capable of writing for instruments of which he was not a master. Such was the case when Telemann was writing various sets of Fantasias for solo instruments, and tapping into the demand coming from the burgeoning amateur market in Hamburg. One of these sets of 12 unaccompanied Fantasias – for the viola da gamba – was known to have been composed around 1735 but had been lost until very recently and it is only now that modern-day players are exploring Telemann’s approach to a revitalized genre but on what – by the 1730s – was becoming an increasingly outmoded instrument. From fugal writing to the galant idiom and different reflections of the French and Italian styles, Telemann packs a great deal of variety into these typically three-movement Fantasias. Paolo Pandolfo, who contributes an incisive performer’s note in the booklet, additionally records the 1728 D major Sonata from Der getreue Music- Meister, the only other work for the viola da gamba known by Telemann, whilst Peter Wollny reflects on Telemann’s compositional development in his own essay.