NEW CENTURY FLUTE CONCERTOS – HOFMEYR: Double Concerto; COLLA: Romance for Flute and Strings; GALANTE: I Sospiri de Ariel for Flute and Strings; AGUIAR: Concertino for Piccolo and Strings – Raffaele Trevisani, flute and piccolo/ Piet Koornhof, violin /Moscow Chamber Orch./Roberto Duarte & Constantine Orbelian, conductors – Delos DE 3399 [Distr. by Naxos], 74:09 ***:
Composer Ernani Aguilar wrote of his Concertino for Piccolo and Strings, “I don’t give a damn about music intellectuals; I care about musicians, about my colleagues and my listening public. This is the spirit that has inspired my Concertino.” This is a disc of flute and piccolo concertos written by Italian, South African and Brazilian composers born in the mid-twentieth century and performed by a Russian orchestra. The music here is tonally accessible, with varying use of modern compositional techniques. All these works were dedicated or commissioned for flutist Raffaele Trevisani.
There won’t be many listeners who will object to the spirited melodies and jaunty rhythms that Aguilar writes in his Concertino for Piccolo and Strings. The high range of the piccolo provides a zippy foil for the strings in the first movement. A contemplative slower second movement is followed by a happy choro (a Brazilian folk form played by a band and used in popular and classical music). Hendrik Hofmeyer’s Double Concerto for Violin and Flute (2002) structurally mirrors a traditional 18th century concerto for solo instrument and strings. The first movement contrasts a rhythmic first theme with a lyrical second. The sadly beautiful Adagietto builds to a moving climax, followed by a lively Vivace scherzoso in rondo form.
In Alberto Colla’s one-movement Quasi una Romanza for Flute and Strings, contrasts are created by juxtaposing lyrical sections with dissonant ones in this 22-minute work. The melodic line is held by the flute, which becomes a soloist in a cadenza-like middle section. This is the most interesting and harmonically advanced work on the CD and flutist Trevisani negotiates the challenges impressively.
In Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, Ariel becomes the “acrobatic executor of Prospero’s sorceries…he’s swift and skillful, and, at the same time, incorporeal and immaterial, “void” without Prospero’s witchcrafts,” writes composer Carlo Galante. In his I Sospiri di Ariel for Flute and Strings, the flute becomes Ariel in this non-narrative evocative concerto. It’s a virtuosic vehicle for the flute that is delightful, and rhythmically acute with a melancholic undertone. Raffaele Trevisani combines musical understanding with technical proficiency in this work, as he does throughout this CD.
The balance between flute, piccolo and orchestra is ideal and the sound is close but spacious. This disc is a cross-section of recent concertos for flute and orchestra that are interesting and rewarding.
— Robert Moon
