Magdalena Hoffmann’s debut Deutsche Grammophon album, Nightscapes (“a delightful recital” – The Whole Note), earned the artist a 2022 Opus Klassik Young Talent of the Year award for her performances of works from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. And Gramophone wrote: “Hoffmann’s legerdemain still dazzles. ... I find her balance of songful lyricism and inexorable forward motion especially impressive”. For her second DG recording, Fantasia, the harpist has travelled further back in time to focus on the music of the Baroque period. Here she showcases her instrument in a selection of fantasias and preludes originally written for keyboard or lute by Johann Sebastian Bach, his sons Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel, and his contemporaries Handel and Weiss.

By the 18th century, the term “fantasia”, in use since the Renaissance, indicated a piece of instrumental music characterised by a combination of stylistic invention and structural discipline. As Magdalena Hoffmann points out, “Improvisatory freedom and formal rigour come together to create a living, breathing entity – these contrasts make for fertile ground when it comes to musical creation.” Her chosen composers may not have been writing for the harp, but whether labelled fantasias, preludes, overtures, airs or allegros, their works in this genre are perfectly suited to the instrument. “The harp has what you might almost call a home advantage,” she says, “thanks to its natural potential for the kind of free, ornamental arpeggiation so typical of Baroque preludes and fantasias.” 

Magdalena Hoffmann channels the Baroque spirit of improvisation on Fantasia, using the resonance and versatility of the harp to add new dynamic and spatial dimensions to this richly imaginative repertoire. “The harp offers the possibility of great inner tension and a kind of spiritual dynamic which has a liberating effect,” she notes. “And that means each fantasia is like a musical snapshot that sounds different every time you play it – its energy is infinite, and it can never be definitively captured.”

Tracklisting:

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714–1788)
1 Fantasia in E flat major Wq deest (H 348)

Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (1710–1784)
2 Prelude in C minor F 29
3 Fantasia in A minor F 23

Silvius Leopold Weiss (1686–1750)
4 Prelude in C minor
5 Fantasia in C minor WSW 9

George Frideric Handel (1685–1759)
Prelude & Allegro in A minor HWV 576
6 Prelude
7 Allegro

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)
8 Prelude (Fantasia) in C minor BWV 921

George Frideric Handel 
9 Overture from Suite in G minor HWV 453:1
10 Prelude from Partita in C minor HWV 444:1
11 Air in G minor HWV 467

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
12 Fantasia in D major Wq 117:14 (H 160)

Johann Sebastian Bach
13 Fantasia in G minor (Fantasia duobus subjectis) BWV 917 

George Frideric Handel 
14 Prelude in D minor HWV 562

Wilhelm Friedemann Bach
15 Fantasia in D minor F 19

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
16 Fantasia in F sharp minor “C. P. E. Bachs Empfindungen” Wq 67 (H 300)

Johann Sebastian Bach
17 Sinfonia (Fantasia) No. 11 in G minor BWV 797