Fantasia, fantasy, fancy – call it what you like, the genre has a special place in music. Its roots are in the music of British Renaissance composers, when it began as the transference of choral writing techniques to instruments such as the keyboard and lute. Presumably composers such as Byrd couldn’t resist adding in improvisatory passages showing off the qualities of the instrument and, who knows, perhaps their own talents too. Thus a genre of music unfettered by strict form, allowing the composers imagination to run free, was born.
Pianist Mishka Rushdie Momen is obviously particularly attracted to the fantasia and, it has to be said, she has a talent for it. Her whole programme in Sheffield consisted of fantasias and fantasia-like pieces, with one exception. The Prelude in C from Book One of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier might fit, and Momen did give it a delicate, dreamy quality. But the Fugue? Absolutely not, obviously. Nevertheless, Momen wove the strictly tailored tapestry of voices together beautifully.
Momen described Mozart’s Fantasia for Piano in C minor as operatic, and so was her performance. Thundering dramatically, or singing delicately, it was a captivating story. She followed this with Schumann’s Impromptus on a Theme by Clara Wieck. It’s almost a set of improvised variations, and Momen reveled in the atmosphere of free-flowing emotion.