Violinist Anca Vasile Caraman, Georg Philipp Telemann - CD Review, the 17th of January 2023

Less than a year after she released an album with Eugene Ysaÿe's difficult sonatas op.27, the violinist Anca VasileCaraman offers a new record that also includes pieces for solo violin, this time - Georg Philipp Telemann's collection of The 12 Fantasias.

The recording process took place in July 2021 at the Shrine of Madonna della Neve Iseo, and the album premiered last year, on the 4th of November. For this CD, Anca VasileCaraman chose Telemann's Fantasias for solo violin -pieces that were released in Hamburg, in the year 1735, approximately 15 years after Johann Sebastian Bach had created his famous Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin. It is not well known whether Telemann knew about these masterpieces, but it is certain that the two sets of baroque compositions made for violin differ in many respects.

If Bach tried to create polyphonic textures using this monodic instrument, Telemann focused on the expressiveness, on the timbral richness and the melodic charm of the violin - qualities which Anca VasileCaraman explores with great interest, offering a refined interpretation, in an authentic baroque style, with sensibility and contrapuntal clarity.

Anca VasileCaraman is a doctorate student at the National University of Music in Bucharest, under the guidance of professor Şerban Dimitrie Soreanu. She had started studying violin at 4 years old, in Tulcea, her hometown, and later in life she moved to Bucharest and attended the "George Enescu" High School of Music and the National University of Music. In 2006, she left Romania to improve her skills at the National Academy of Santa Cecilia in Rome, where she obtained her master's degree, her teacher being the Italian violinist Domenico Nordio. In the meantime, she won numerous awards in international competitions, the last one being in the Rovered'Oro competition, in 2010.

Between 2012 and 2018 she taught at Brescia and the Darfo Conservatory, continuing her concert performer career: until now she has performed on stage in Austria, Italy, France, Germany, Denmark, Belgium, Great Britain and, of course, Romania. In parallel with all these activities, Anca VasileCaraman also has studio projects, her discography especially bringing together pieces from the Italian repertoire - 5 CDs with Antonio Bazzini's music for the Brilliant Classics record label, 2 albums with Alberto Bonera's creations, as well as Antonio Vivaldi and Astor Piazzolla's concerto collections, The Four Seasons.

Also, the violinist released in collaboration with Stradivarius Records an extensive project that means printing sets of pieces for solo violin: Sebastian Bach's Sonatas and Partitas, Niccolò Paganini's Caprices, Eugene Ysaÿe's Sonatas op. 27 and Georg Philipp Telemann's 12 Fantasias from the album included in the "Best records of 2023" project at Radio România Muzical.