capricious Quantz

After more than a year of bouncing back and forth between Bach father and son (CPE), I felt ready for a different composer, so tried some unaccompanied Quantz pieces for the first time. I found them in the collection "Die Soloflöte" edited by Mirjam Nastasi (CF Peters 1991). They were selected from a volume with 24 unaccompanied caprices by Quantz.



For this year's Festival, I prepared a short fantasia in e minor, and Alla Francese. (The other piece I had also worked on but didn't select for the festival was the capriccio in G.)


For the Alla francese, I really like this recording by Zoe Sorrell, where it appears first in a set of four Quantz pieces.

For the fantasia, there isn't much choice - this video by "tuning fork music" appears to be the only video on Youtube where you can see somebody play the piece (as opposed to audio tracks presumably ripped off some CD).

For a separate Festival class I have also prepared the Bach Badinerie (with the minuet, the movement that precedes it in the suite), about which I raved earlier. The amazing vocal version by Sheila Blanco arrived just in time to give me an extra push for this one.

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Update 28.1.20:
The main thing I learned from performing the Quantz pieces on Sunday morning: don't schedule performances for 9:30am. Within the preparation time (building opened at 9am) I had a real struggle to get one of the trickier bits in the pieces to work. Clearly my flute isn't a morning person. Which amused me as it doesn't have any problem playing all night until 5 am.
Also, I created a YouTube playlist of the repertoire pieces I have attempted to play since 2016.

Update 15.2.20:
Only after completing my YouTube playlist did I discover that the editor of the work, Mirjam Nastasi, has recorded her own version of many of the pieces in the book. CDs are available from her website, and some of the tracks are on a playlist on Youtube. From her website, I also learned that she has just published volume 5 of "Die Soloflöte", covering 1960 to 2000. I'm still happily stuck in the baroque volume though.