Telemann's Keyboard Fantasias are not, perhaps, an ideal diet for over 70 minutes of continuous listening, even when the disc includes only 20 out of a total of 36 pieces. Though reasonably varied, they are certainly not Telemann at his most beguiling, and their unremitting A-B-A form involves an awful lot of repetition. There are two basic types: a 'French' type, slightly more eloquent and with appropriate headings such as 'tendrement' or 'gracieusement'; and an 'Italian' with a faintly Scarlattiesque melodic style, though without anything like that composer's inspiration.
I suspect that even a harpsichordist with no other sheet music in the house would get a little fed up with this after a while and reach for a pinch of snuff, so I congratulate John Butt and his producer on spending three days recording them for us. For this they went to the Russell Collection in Edinburgh and used two of its instruments: a Hass from 1764 and the much-admired Goermans/Taskin rebuild from a few years later. The insert-notes do not tell us which Butt uses where, but both sound rather fine, even if the acoustic of St Cecilia's Hall is a little dry and aggressive, and Edinburgh roars menacingly in the background.
Butt's playing is neat and crisp, and here and there he tastefully enriches the predominantly two-part texture by adding fragments of inner lines. In general, however, his performances lack subtlety and grace. Telemann is a composer of charm, wit and occasional quirky invention, yet here he is too often made to sound frantic and breathless, especially in the fast outer sections, which on occasion begin to sound like silent-film music. The short slow sections, too, could have been more lovingly and lyrically spun out, or at least more contrasted in tempo. You will not find another disc with anything like as large a selection of these pieces on it, but even so this one can be only cautiously recommended.'