released June 27, 2022

to Ainara

Some pieces of music stand by you a lifetime. At first these pieces teach you, then, after decades of teaching, they help you to teach. On the stand, they remain faithful to intimacy.
Thus are, to me, these telemann fantasias, so close there is no need for me to capitalize them. Telemann takes one straight to the edge of what‘s possible. The Fantasias rebel against the transposition that we, recorder players, submit them to.
I had the wish to record them home, searching for coziness and intimacy. Furthermore, I had the need for wood, wood in my hands, wood where I live.
As for the sound take, I wanted a raw result, faithful to the immediacy and flaws of my playing. I have the friend who knew how to do it.
Sometimes a recording is released for you to listen to it from beginning to end; in other cases, such as this one, it offers the complete work as a unity.
I am not the one to tell the listener how to approach this recording, but I’d like to recommend them to listen to one piece at a time. Each one of them is a tiny masterpiece. As a whole, they portray the musical forms and instrumental combinations characteristic of the first half of the 18th century. All in all it’s just a piece of wood in my hands.



Dear Georg Philipp,
I apologise for this personal treatment. There is a great deal of time between us, and I doubt that, if we were to meet in person, the cultural barriers that the centuries have established would make communication easy for us.
My relationship with you is totally conditioned by the instrument to which I have devoted my life; I have no doubt that if I had been driven to play, for example, the harmonica, you would be a perfect stranger to me. I have a very clear memory of an occasion -I was no more than fourteen or fifteen years old and my musical knowledge was still very limited- when I attended a concert in the neighbourhood of Gràcia. The great Lluís Casso and Jordi Argelaga played pieces that I found amazing: the harmonic illusion that those two flutes created was like one of the first sparks that led me to do what I did (and I would really like to leave your duets recorded!). Over time I have got to know you and, slowly but surely, I have grown to love you. Often, I seem to feel in your work a very clear advice, some help and nods that lead me to consider you a very great Master. As the master that life has made me become, believe me that you are very useful to me!
It would be unnecessary to mention the vastness of your work, which covers practically everything. On very few occasions have I been able to participate in the most monumental part of it, but, instead, I have enjoyed the prodigality with which you have treated my instrument in the field of chamber music. Now you are witnessing the paradox that I have recorded a work that you composed for others... Strange behaviour! We defend the value of an instrument whose repertoire at times we seem not to value enough, looking for outside what our vehemence would advise us to look for inside.
You were a man who cared about the impression he left behind and how others saw him. At least this is the way I realised it when I knew that you wrote not one but two autobiographies in which you made sure that you talked about yourself in the best possible terms. In them you already mention the work that concerns us, the score of which had been considered lost until in the middle of the last century it was related to some papers kept in the library of the Conservatoire in Brussels, without any indication of authorship and with the title Fantasies per il Violino senza Basso. It amuses me to think that this mistake in the title, which you did not write, is responsible for the instrumental diaspora with which we approach them, so much so that I have even managed to talk about it to students who played the saxophone!
You, who do not even know what instrument I'm talking about, will probably have had the opportunity to meet Jacques-Martin, the Hotteterre known as “the Roman". This marvellous colleague of yours said in the preface to his first book of pieces for the transverse flute that those of us who wished to play them on the recorder could transpose them a minor third higher. I would have never thought so! It was enough for us to believe that we were "historically" authorised to tackle the entire repertoire of the transverse flute with the transposition. The existence of the "voice" flute has come to make things even more strange, as it allows us to play the original notes with the same fingerings as when we transpose them with the hegemonic flute in F. What interests me about all this at the moment is the fact that when playing it on an eight-hole pipe, the instrumental colour is radically different to that of a six-hole pipe, and, additionally, some of the tonalities become more acrobatic.
In the recorder, the expressive limitations are more evident when the tonalities are more open. On the other hand, in the far tonalities, the fingerings naturally offer the flautist more flexibility at the interesting price of fragility.
Although it may be hard to believe, today there are very few people who make music. Almost no one sings while they potter around, and, instead, the most common thing is that we put some little things in our ears that play songs to us from a little device we carry around in our pocket. The consumption of recorded music has become the main musical experience and allows us to listen to the same interpretations over and over again, which has exacerbated the displeasure that we, the performers, experience with our own mistakes. Since we can correct any blunder by cutting and pasting with the help of sophisticated procedures, it has become possible to go to the extreme of offering the public a "perfect" interpretation of a work that we may not even be able to play straight away. What is "perfect", then? Life has led me to think that music happens. Each performance is unique and everything that happens there is the fruit of events as they come and go. That is why I love each version in its "perfection", including the blunders!
As a result of this personal process, I have become more and more radical as regards the need to renounce all these corrections and accept my interpretations as they come out. Now, moreover, I am happy to opt for a natural and close capture of the sound, without any kind of artifice in the post-production of it. This is how my flute sounds in my intimacy, in – I would like to believe – its beauty. And if it irritates you, I'm sorry, that is how it sounds. I can do no more. I do not want to do any more.
I can only thank you for your work. Your teachings, your company. The preservation of heritage makes this strange form of communication across the generations possible. I live in the illusion that I know you and, if you will excuse my daring, I consider you a friend.
Ever devoutly yours,
Joan Izquierdo

(English translation: Beatrice Krayenbühl)