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!).
Does the diffuse, slightly murky sonic ambience intentionally correspond to the pianist’s idea of a concept arising from subconscious free-association? Time will tell if this interesting, sometimes insightful, sometimes wrongheaded program withstands repeated hearings. Can someone explain the cover photo of Greilsammer looking away from three Asian women huddled in the background?
