Ticket order:
Access: transport
There are excellent train connections from Celje to Ljubljana and Maribor even in the evening after the concert.
Artist’s message to visitors
The viola da gamba has a large solo repertory, and now it is enlarged with these 12 wonderful solo Fantasias by one the baroque era’s most prolific and talented composers. Telemann played most instruments, and certainly played the viol well enough to be able to compose complex music that is idiomatic, encompassing all the forms of the age: fugues, recitatives, adagios, and all manner of dances. Listening to them all in one go, one is constantly surprised and delighted by the variety of invention, and the journey that Telemann takes the listener. I wonder if he had heard his friend Bach’s music for solo violin and cello, and if these were his model.
My artistic mission
is to discover and perform all manner of music on the viol, both for the solo instrument and for viol consort. With Fretwork, we have played and recorded most of the greatest music written for viol consort from past centuries and commissioned over fifty new works by some of today’s greatest composers. Personally, as well as recording the Telemann Fantasias, played tonight, I am engaged in a project to discover, perform, and record as much lyra viol music as possible; and I have so far recorded two albums, each with music by William Lawes and Alfonso Ferrabosco respectively. I plan to record the rest of Ferrabosco’s 1609 publication this year.
Event programme
Georg Philipp Telemann, 12 Solo Fantasias for viol (1734, complete collection)
Telemann wrote sets of solo fantasias for flute, violin and, more conventionally, for harpsichord. And it has long been known that he also wrote and published a set of 12 for solo viola da gamba, as the publication had been advertised in 1734. Yet no copy seemed to have survived, until a castle near Osnabrück donated a large collection of music to the State library there in 2000. It was a vast collection, and it took fully ten years for librarians to sort through and catalogue this music; it was only then that it became clear that this publication was amongst this treasure trove. In 2015 it was announced that it had been found and that a new publication would be issued the following year, together with a recording during the Mecklenburg Telemann Festival in March 2016. I played this programme in St George’s, Brandon Hill, Bristol in September 2016, and the audience was asked to write their thoughts.
Celje, Old Counts' Mansion
This most beautiful Renaissance building in the town was built between 1580 and 1603 on the southern side of the city walls. At the beginning of the 17th century, it was further embellished by arched hallways, and during the 1926 restoration its aesthetic value was increased by the discovery of the famous Celje ceiling.
