Recorder players have begun to partake of the new intensity historical instruments have brought to Baroque music. One exceptionally stylish player is
Karsten Erik Ose, who wrote the booklet notes for the present disc and describes
Telemann's 12 Fantasias for recorder in rather subjective terms (the second fantasia is described by turns as having "despondent features and despairing questions" that alternate and "an enchantingly beautiful Cantabile that seems to dream sweetly of better, past times"). It is not clear from the booklet whether the young Swiss recorder player
Sabrina Frey is
Ose's student or protegee, but whatever the case, she outdoes even his heated Baroque recorder playing. If a solo recorder can be extreme, this is extreme
Telemann, with tempo liberties, very sharp differentiation between legato and strongly articulated notes, and a willingness to let the pitch slide a little while in pursuit of intensified affect. One can suspect
Frey of finding more emotional intensity in
Telemann's music than he actually put in there, and also object to the way her own intensity blurs the clarity of his structures -- in a work like the Fantasia No. 5 in E flat major, where
Telemann packs six distinct sections into under five minutes of music, the impact of the shifting tempos is blunted by
Frey's already impetuous approach. But one can object to these things and yet find
Frey's performance absolutely compelling -- as much as the great Baroque violinists of our day, she rediscovers the performer's aspect of Baroque music.
Telemann's pieces do bespeak "fantasy" in
Frey's readings, in the deepest sense. The recorders used are modern copies of instruments from the early eighteenth century, and they are beautifully recorded in a Zurich church that adds resonance without letting the sound get lost in space.