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Reviewer: Michael
De Sapio
The Baroque era produced a
small but impressive body of works for unaccompanied violin (“violin without
bass,” in the language of the day). Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas are of
course the summit of this repertoire, but there are a number of smaller
peaks as well, including Tartini’s Piccole Sonate, the Assaggi of Johan
Helmich Roman, Biber’s familiar Passacaglia—and Telemann’s colorful and
multi-faceted miniatures, the 12 Fantasias. These pieces, published in 1735,
take in just about every Baroque sonata form in existence (both three- and
four-movement types), reducing complex formal procedures to the medium of a
solo violin through many artful means. They are treasures of the violin’s
repertoire. Fabio Biondi has earned a reputation for vibrant and idiosyncratic renditions of Baroque music on the period violin. No historical performance dogmatist, Biondi frequently pushes the boundaries in interpretations that, depending on your point of view, are refreshing and liberating or mannered and wayward. This disc is no exception. One of Biondi’s strongest points has been his sunny, open sound (he does not eschew vibrato), which is gloriously rich and sonorous here in the reverberant acoustic of an Italian church. There is powerful, bold, and imaginative playing on display here.
But at the same time there is much here that is bewildering. Biondi is so free with the written text that in many places one could legitimately say he has recomposed Telemann’s music. I’m not talking about ornamentation—adding to or embellishing what the composer wrote—Biondi does this frequently as well, and the results are often quite effective. I’m talking about changing what the composer wrote. Throughout, Biondi alters, adds, and omits notes and rhythms according to his fancy. Thus, in the penultimate bar of the Third Fantasia’s Adagio he plays a B♮ instead of a B♭ and adds a D♮ underneath as a double-stop, thus effectively changing the harmonic progression. In the Largo of No. 7 he omits bars 5 and 6, thus obliterating a written-out phrase repetition and altering the architecture of the piece. In the Siciliana of No. 6 he plays the initial statement of each section pizzicato (!) and, again, changes several of the notes. In the Presto of No. 12, Biondi reverses the rhythmic pattern in bars 58–60 from short-long (the “Lombardic” rhythmic pattern) to long-short. And on and on. There is no discernible reason for any of these changes. I don’t think Biondi is working from a different manuscript with variant readings (perhaps someone can set me straight on this point); it seems he has simply decided to toy with what Telemann wrote, and in no case can his alterations be called an improvement. Nor is intonation all it should be here. Because Biondi’s basic sound is so good, the various impure pitches he drops here and there are not as noticeable as they would be in a thinner-toned player. But they are what they are.
For many
listeners, Andrew Manze’s Harmonia Mundi recording is probably the go-to
version of these works. Like Biondi, Manze is a bold and imaginative player;
but he is also a cleaner one and one with a greater respect for the written
text. With a lean, direct sound, he focuses his energies on unlocking the
secrets of the music as written rather than going off on subjective
tangents. In sum, this is a maddening and uneven recording. One wishes that
Biondi would put that warm, expressive Sicilian sound of his to better use.
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