Spellbound - Flute Concertos
Three contemporary concertos that showcase the soloist’s remarkable gifts
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Sally Beamish, Mari Takano, Sofia Gubaidulina
Label: BIS
Magazine Review Date: 3/2009
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 0
Catalogue Number: BISCD1649
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Concerto for Flute and Orchestra (The deceitful face of Hope and of Despair) |
Sofia Gubaidulina, Composer
Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra Mario Venzago, Conductor Sharon Bezaly, Flute Sofia Gubaidulina, Composer |
Concerto for flute and orchestra |
Mari Takano, Composer
Anne Manson, Conductor Mari Takano, Composer Sharon Bezaly, Flute Swedish Chamber Orchestra |
Concerto for flute and orchestra, 'Callisto' |
Sally Beamish, Composer
Martyn Brabbins, Conductor Royal Scottish National Orchestra Sally Beamish, Composer Sharon Bezaly, Flute |
Author: Arnold Whittall
Sofia Gubaidulina’s concerto-like score, …The Deceitful Face of Hope and Despair, inhabits a very different world, moving slowly, portentously, and responding to the line from TS Eliot’s poem “Ash Wednesday” which provides its title with much monolithic percussion within massive orchestral textures against which the solo flute sounds out in sorrowful protest and lament. This piece came shortly before the equally substantial violin concerto In tempus praesens, written for Anne- Sophie Mutter and recently recorded by her (DG, 10/08): that later work seems to me more effective than …The Deceitful Face of Hope and Despair in the way it fills out extended structures with highly charged, elementally assertive musical ideas.
Like the Beamish, Mari Takano’s piece provides a refreshing antidote to Gubaidulina’s gloom and doom. This concerto for flute and strings is dedicated to the memory of Takano’s teacher Ligeti, and finds ways of alluding to his undoctrinaire eclecticism in a score which can move to a pop music beat without sinking into triviality or bombast. This disc is a powerful tribute to Sharon Bezaly’s remarkable gifts (all three works are dedicated to her): and BIS shows commendable enterprise in issuing such a wideranging selection of contemporary works, in excellent recordings of persuasive performances. It deserves every success.
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