Another recording of the Copland Duo, which is not really a late work at all. It was completed in 1971 but parts of it are based on sketches from the 1940s. Copland often did this sort of thing without letting on, so there will be work for future generations of musicologists. He aimed to make the Duo grateful for the performer and has certainly succeeded. Paula Robison is a well endowed flautist approaching all these American works sympathetically and convincingly. The recording of the Copland is not flawless: there is some distortion at higher levels in the finale and the balance tends to favour the piano so that lower register flute writing gets lost. Robison's performance of the Duo is cooler than Fenwick Smith's recording for Northeastern/Koch International and I find his anthology of Copland and Foote more rewarding.
There is no original music for flute and piano from Barber, only arrangements. He transcribed the Canzone (Elegy) from his Piano Concerto, which works well, and Robison has taken the song cycle Melodies passageres and simply plays the voice part on the flute. Compared with some of James Galway's repertoire stolen from other instruments, this seems comparatively trivial and sounds well. Rilke's French poems were set for Bernac and Poulenc, but there is a special languor about Barber's late Scriabin harmony which suits these melodies suspended above it and woven in with piano counterparts.
Roy Harris's Lyric Study is a gem. It was commissioned by the Juilliard Foundation in about 1950 and was the first of a projected series. Paula Robison gave the work its premiere in 1989 and this is the first recording. It shows how a composer at home in large epic designs can also turn an exquisite miniature. The bitonal harmony suggests Milhaud but the melody has blues implications, altogether implying new directions for late Harris.
The lessons of brevity could be learnt by Robert Beaser, who was commissioned by Susan Rotholtz to write his Variations for flute and piano in 1981. That may seem an unfair comment when he set out to write a substantial three-movement work (of some 26 minutes) which provides plenty of variety and here gets a thoroughly convincing performance. But it takes up a disproportionate slice of this oddly constituted anthology.'