Martin, Bedard, Kropfreiter, Langlais, Baker & Roth: Music for Flute & Organ

http://www.renaud-bray.com

http://www.renaud-bray.com

*** Résumé en anglais seulement *** A unique recital on record, for ahauntingly beautiful instrumentalcombination, featuring several firstrecordings. The duo of trumpet and organ is a wellestablished one, having attractedcomposers from the early Baroqueperiod onwards. The combination offlute and organ, while requiring carefulbalancing so that the organ does notoverwhelm the flute, is no lessattractive in it's way, and has drawnfrom composers a more varied paletteof expression. This new album is madeby a duo of Piedmontese musicianswho have explored the riches of theflute-and-organ repertoire to come upwith a balanced selection of pieceswritten by 20th- and 21st-centurycomposers on both sides of theAtlantic.Duo Les Brumes begin with anundoubted masterpiece: the Sonata daChiesa which the Swiss composer FrankMartin originally composed in 1939 forviola d'amore and organ. Because hisDutch wife Maria Boeke was anexcellent flautist, he also produced aversion for flute and organ in 1941. Thesonata's three sections enclose asequence of gentle, neoclassical dancemovements between two reflectiveslow movements. The album's othersubstantial work is Ain Karim, afantasia composed in 1995 by the Swissorganist-composer Daniel Roth. AïnKarim is the name of the place nearJerusalem where Mary, mother ofJesus, is thought to have visited hercousin Elisabeth and spoken the wordsof the 'Magnificat'. Daniel Roth hastaken part of this text ('He puts downthe mighty from their seat and exaltsthe humble and meek') to emphasisethe contrast between the 'small' fluteand the 'monumental' organ. In between, Duo Les Brumes present agallery of vividly coloured miniatures: asuite of Four Pieces composed in 1962by the Austrian composer AugustinFranz Kropfreiter (1936-2003), withinthe same kind of 'modern neoclassical'vein as Martin's Sonata da Chiesa; thenFive Pieces by Jean Langlais, moreextrovert in character. Two Canadiancomposers are also represented withthe radiant, soaring Melodia by DenisBédard and the Elegy by MichaelConway Baker.