Georg Philipp Telemann's 12 Fantasies for solo violin, composed in 1735, are not really successors to
Bach's towering set of solo violin pieces, which were part of a long German virtuoso tradition stretching back into the middle of the seventeenth century.
Telemann's fantasies were intended for publication and probably aimed at an emerging amateur market. They do include attractive uses of double- and triple-stopping, but there aren't long chains of dual melody as in
Bach's sonatas and partitas, and there's nothing that forces the user of a modern violin to distort the music. They are less fantasies than sonatas, with three or four short Italianate movements run together, and their mood, even in the minor-key pieces, is lively and pleasant, with a generally melodic emphasis. The young German-Italian-American violinist
Augustin Hadelich offers confident, sprightly readings that place proper emphasis on the peaks of difficulty in the fast movements but don't load the music up with more virtuosity or more meaning than it can bear. The chilly, over-resonant sound of suburban Toronto's St. John Chrysostom Church is a negative, but it's hard to imagine a listener who wouldn't enjoy these little demonstrations of
Telemann's abundant powers of invention.