Chamber Music for Flute = 1GAUBERT: Sonata No. 2; 2MARTINU: Madrigal Sonata; 3GALLI: Capriccio for 2 Flutes; 4MANSKER: Danza e fuga, Op. 33; 5Improvisation on J.S. Bach for Flute and Indian Percussion – Linda Marianiello, flute/ 1Franz Vote, piano/ 2Wendy Thompson, flute/ Kazue Tsuzuki-Weber, piano/ 3Brooks de Wetter-Smith, flute/ 4Barton Weber, piano/ 5Tunji Beier, Indian percussion – MSR MS 1814 (71:00) (4/28/25) [www.msr.com] ****:
We have before us glowing performances by flutist Linda Marianiello, recorded in Bavaria as part of the Orchestra of the Bavarian Radio. Her efforts celebrate musicians with whom she worked and an otherwise limited repertory for the instrument. The palpable love of collaboration suffuses the collection, a fine tribute to the veteran flute player Marianiello.
Philippe Gaubert (1879-1941) evolved from a flute player in French orchestras to a composer-conductor. Sonata No. 2 (1925) was written for Marcel Moyse, and it demonstrates a virtuosic, Romantic style. The spirit of all three movements remains pastoral, ethereal, and bucolic, with moments of aerial bravura, as in the last movement, Tres vif. The writing for the keyboard is equally demanding, either in quick, staccato notes or startling runs.
Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959) blended his natural, Czech temperament with his classical, Parisian training, often in a neo-Classical style imitative of Stravinsky. His Madrigal Sonata was composed in 1942 and published in 1949. The composer combines his penchant \for Baroque forms to his love of bird calls he heard at Cape Cod. The unusual instrumentation allows the textures a singing clarity. The first movement, Poco allegro, is quick to change color and contour. The longer Moderato movement opens with the flute against a pizzicato violin and parlando piano. The mood seems casual, somewhat ornamental and dissonant. Suddenly, a buzzing effect becomes dominant, the music more agitated, almost percussively pentatonic in sound. Then, a lyrical phase sets in, gently transparent. The last section gains velocity and randomness, the sounds colliding in happy harmony.
Raffaelo Galli (1824-2889) converts Donizetti’s arietta from the opera Linda di Chamounix(1842) into a virtuoso Capriccio for Two Flutes. Typical of coloratura arias, Galli has the flutes serve in high, ornamental registers and warble affectionately in the slower episodes. The show-stopper, at the two-minute coda, involves constantly rising scales and sudden leaps, with the lines inverted for each player to demonstrate her and his versatility.
Carl Mansker (1935-2019) was a gifted, Los Angeles pianist and flutist. Danza e fuga, Op. 33 offers challenges in timing and articulation to the virtuoso flutist and pianist, as if both players were improvising. Scalar patterns and leaps permeate the Danza, often in close imitation. Each player has a brief solo. The Fuga, pointillistic in texture, has an aerial quality, almost an elevated march that ends in a flurry of notes. His earlier Five Chinese Poems, Op. 13 perhaps affected by a love of Mahler, reflect the tone of sad poems of love and nature. Pentatonic scales in slow movement accompany the soprano, who intones in a manner of speech-song, taken from Schoenberg. Low bass chords and high flute and piano tessitura mark The Jealous Woman in her brief agony. Even more pained, The Forsaken Woman has a texture like Ligeti’s music for the film Eyes Wide Shut. The two last songs, The Grass at XinShe Castle and The Fan in Autumn, attempt to find solace in a harsh emotional environment.
Improvisation for Flute and Indian Percussion derives from J.S. Bach’s Sarabande from Partita for Solo Flute, BWV 1013. The piece, in A Minor, casts a melancholy lyricism cross-fertilized by exotic vitality, underlined by the Baroque flute’s counterpoint with the rhythmic Indian instruments, mridangam and ghatam.
—Gary Lemco
