Bach's Flute Sonatas
Bach's Flute Sonatas
The Gramophone Choice
Flute Sonatas – BWV1030, 1033, 1034 & 1035. Solo Flute Partita in A minor, BWV1013
Ashley Solomon fl Terence Charlston hpd
Channel Classics CCS15798 (71' · DDD) Buy from Amazon
This is an impressive and enjoyable CD that easily bears repeated listening. There’s a soothing quality to the Baroque flute, and its gentle, slightly reedy tone is captured very well here. It’s closely recorded in a church acoustic to give a brilliant tone with added depth. Today’s makers of the Baroque flute are producing highly refined instruments, exemplified here by the Rod Cameron copy of a Denner, which has a strong, even tone and good balance of register, allowing highly accomplished performers like Ashley Solomon complete technical freedom.
This recording isn’t merely music therapy, however, but a genuine musical experience. His performance of the unaccompanied A minor Partita, for example, is nothing short of commanding: the control in articulation and breathing allows the phrasing to be flexible and unfussy. It’s the directness of his interpretations that’s so telling; there’s almost none of that slightly coy rubato that some other flautists use to disguise the need to breathe. Rather, Solomon ensures that the phrases are neither choppy nor fragmented. He has an excellent sense of the longer line and the harmonic pull beneath Bach’s wonderfully melodic writing. The faster movements are perhaps the most successful, full of buoyancy and energy without seeming rushed or pushed. Try the second movement of the E minor Sonata, for example, or that of the C major. Slow movements are far from inexpressive, but again refreshingly direct: he never wallows (a good example is the introductory movement of the E major Sonata).
Solomon is well partnered by Terence Charlston on a rich-toned Ruckers-copy harpsichord. Even if you already have a version of Bach’s flute works on CD this can be strongly recommended, and it makes an equally good first-time buy too. Prepare to be uplifted.
Additional Recommendation
Six Sonatas, BWV1030‑35. Sonata, BWV1020. Trio Sonata, BWV1039
Emmanuel Pahud fl Trevor Pinnock hpd Jonathan Manson vc Silvia Careddu fl
EMI 217443-2 (101’ · DDD) Buy from Amazon
Bach flute sonata recordings on modern instruments are not unknown but a ‘complete’ set of all seven authentic and doubtful works, plus the Sonata for two flutes and continuo (better known as the G major Gamba Sonata), is bit of a rarity. That said, we can be glad that the excellent Emmanuel Pahud is the one to have taken up the challenge, for this is a recording of great skill and refinement which should give considerable pleasure. He has teamed up with distinguished Baroque-specialising partners to achieve results that are technically assured and stylistically confident.
The most immediately attractive feature of these performances is their touching and gentle beauty; Pahud never forces the sound and maintains an evenly controlled tone at all times, with no tightening on high notes or straining on low ones. It is true that he is without the constant subtle shadings possible on a Baroque wooden flute, but for the most part Pahud’s playing shows a sensitive concern for detailed and enlivening articulation without being slave to it, and a keen sense of the music’s greater rise and fall, revealed in some drowsily relaxed slow movements.
The recording is not generous to the harpsichord, which, while crisply caressed as ever by Pinnock, is too far back to contribute as meaningfully as it should in the sonatas where it has an obbligato role equal to the flute’s, and neither is there any great sweetening of sound for compensation. But this is fine stuff nevertheless.
