various artists compilation - Music for Flute and Piano
The unaccompanied flute presents a special challenge to the composers represented on this disk because in writing for it their proven means of assuring variety are not available. Extreme contrast in timbre, density, and dynamics has been normal in the work of younger Europeans ever since the "Klangfarbenmelodie" of Webern; their fascination with "beauty of sound for its own sake" has led to an increasing use of noises and special sounds, produced by percussion, electronic means, or conventional instruments. Heterogeneous groups have replaced the string quartet and solo works are usually assigned to instruments capable of a large range of unconventional sound, such as the percussion battery or (preparable) piano. Music for solo flute is an exception to the trend: three octave-fulls of twelve tones, a range of timbre more restricted than that of many other instruments, one or two associated noises (the rush of breath without pitch or the tapping of hole-covers against rims) are all there are to work with. Even a texture of wide staccato leaps will have a ribbon-like continuity on the flute because of its homogeneous tone-color and comparatively narrow dynamic range. The composer will be working in miniature, articulating subtle shades of attack and tone-color at the disposal of his flutist: angle and pressure of breath, varieties in tonguing, the choice of fundamentals with which to overblow tones in the upper registers.In trying to do more with the instrument he will be pitting himself against Theobald Boehm, whose formidable arrangement of rods and levers had subjected the venerable flute to the requirements of 19th Century music. Flexibility and individuality among pitches had been sacrificed to perfect intonation and agility. But there sometimes appear composers and players imaginative enough to make instruments the servants of styles for which their builders did not intend them (such as in the unaccompanied violin music of Bach or the bassoon phrases in "Sacre"). In the pieces of Berio and Maderna, to some extent, and particularly in the one by Evangelisti, Gazzelloni is able to break through the chromatic grid of precisely bored holes and their perfectly tuned partials to give us glissandos, airy organums, the glint of distant overtones flickering in the midst of notes spoken "falsely." Such sounds give the hearer a fresh sense of the mystery of the vibrating air column and he becomes conscious of the mechanics of venting and overblowing which had formerly been private concerns of the player. (David Behrman, from the liner notes)
Severino Gazzelloni - flute
Aloys Kontarsky - piano
Tracks A1, A3 and B2 are for solo flute.
Tracks A2, B1, and B3 are for flute and piano.
Tracklisting:
Side A
1. Franco Evangelisti - Proporzioni {4:40}
2. Niccolo Castiglioni - Gymel {4:32}
3. Luciano Berio - Sequenza {6:32}
Side B
1. Olivier Messiaen - Merles Noir {7:01}
2. Yoritsune Madsudaira - Somaksah {5:56}
3. Bruno Maderna - Honeyrêves {6:15}
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