Fantasie_Fantasme

Johann Sebastian Bach (Composer), Johannes Brahms (Composer), John Cage (Composer), Leos Janacek (Composer), Jonathan Keren (Composer), Gyorgy Ligeti (Composer), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Composer), Arnold Schoenberg (Composer), David Greilsammer (Performer)

Product Details

• Performer: David Greilsammer
• Composer: Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, John Cage, Leos Janacek, Jonathan Keren, et al.
• Audio CD (November 27, 2007)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Naive
• ASIN: B000R31MZC
• Average Customer Review: No customer reviews yet. Be the first.
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #209,167 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

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Editorial Reviews

New York Times, Anthony Tommasini, November 2008
He begins with one of the boldest fantasies ever written, the first part of Bach's "Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue," playing just that rhapsodic and grimly agitated fantasy section. He then segues directly into the first of two recent "Fantastrophes" by Jonathan Keren, frenetically jazzy music that shifts between states of sublime mysticism and catastrophic wildness.

The surprising segues continue, as Mr. Greilsammer moves to Brahms's mellow Intermezzo in A minor from the Op. 116 Fantasies, then to the first three of Schoenberg's elusive Six Little Piano Pieces and Ligeti's fantastical "Musica Ricercata" (the sixth movement), in which Ligeti's jittery counterpoint harkens to Bach.

"The Presentiment," a hallucinogenic movement from Janacek's Sonata "1.X.1905," which follows, proves an ideal setup for Cage's playfully exotic Sonata No. 5 for Prepared Piano. Mozart's stormy, episodic Fantasy in C minor (K. 475), which Mr. Greilsammer plays with arresting freedom yet crisp articulation, marks the halfway point in the program.

From there he circles back almost in a mirror reflection, through Cage, Janacek, Ligeti and so on, playing some of the missing movements and parts of works we have already heard incomplete, concluding with the fugue from the Bach piece. Somehow, in this context, and thanks to Mr. Greilsammer's dynamic performance, the imposing counterpoint of Bach's great fugue sounds fantastical.

ClassicsToday.com, Jed Distler, October 2008
David Greilsammer's "Fantasie_Fantasme" program assembles two centuries-worth of diverse piano compositions in a mirror-like progression. Mozart's C minor Fantasy K. 475 is the centerpiece, sandwiched between a pair of John Cage Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano. Before the first Cage piece comes the first movement of Janácek's Sonata 1.X.1905; its second movement follows the second Cage piece. Bach's Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue provides the program's bookends.

Greilsammer similarly divides young Israeli composer Jonathan Keren's Fantaisie, Mais 2 Fantastrophe: one section follows Bach's Fantasy, the other precedes Bach's Fugue. Brahms' A minor Op. 116 Intermezzo comes third, with the same composer's D minor Op. 116 Capriccio placed third to last. Fourth up are the first three of Schoenberg's Six Little Pieces Op. 19, while the remaining three occupy the running order's fourth to last slot. Slot five holds Ligeti's Musica Ricercata No. 6; No. 8 occupies slot eleven.

You don't have to understand or even approve Greilsammer's conceptual game plan to appreciate how fluently most of the selections dovetail, or how striking the ensuing transitions are. For example, I love when the Cage Sonata No. 5's playful textures suddenly run up against the bald, declamatory C-natural that opens the Mozart.

Perhaps all of this musical reshuffling and re-contextualizing informs Greilsammer's interpretive idiosyncrasies. The Bach's outsized mood-swings and willful extremes in dynamics and articulation are cases in point. The unusually protracted and static Brahms A minor Intermezzo melts all the more seamlessly into the first Schoenberg Op. 19 piece on account of the latter's slow, rhapsodic interpretation. On the other hand, Greilsammer genuinely understands the Cage pieces' gentle, dancing nature, the young Ligeti's nervous drive, and Janácek's peculiar brand of speech-song (what lovely colors he divines from the unison melodies and trills!).