"A Flute Alone" - Idit Shemer records 18th, 19th and 20th century works for solo flute

Idit Shemer (photo:Anat Oren)

 

Nowadays, performance of western music written for one melodic instrument (not necessarily monophonic) seems low on the priorities of both professional- and amateur musicians, much of it, in fact, being unfamiliar to many concert-goers. Could it be that it has been relegated by some to the domain of pedagogical etudes? Granted, this repertoire is highly personal, frequently played in the confines of the home, with the musician in communication with himself. Yet, this genre offers a rich variety of styles ranging from the earliest of notated works to the most contemporary. In the liner notes to her recently-issued disc “A Flute Alone”, Idit Shemer writes: “So much has been written for the solo flute and so little is performed.” Giving the stage to works for solo flute, she performs each on the appropriate instrument of the period.

 

The disc presents a number of European- and two American 19^th- and 20^th century works. Two short evocative works by Parisian composers – Arthur Honegger’s cyclical “Danse de la chèvre” (The Goat Dance) written in 1921 as incidental music for dancer Jane Lysana in Sacha Derek's play “La mauvaise”, a piece of mixed modality, moving between the sombre and the whimsical, and Jacques Ibert’s “Piéce” (1936) – lyrical, extemporal and cantabile – are performed here with freshness, fine shaping and a sense of discovery. In an interview with Bruce Duffie in 1989, American composer John La Montaine (1920-2013) referred to the composing process thus: “I think there’s something interior that’s very, very deep inside of you, that you don’t really have access to, and that’s where that comes from”. Shemer’s playing of his Sonata for flute solo, Op. 24 (1957) endorses the enlisting of this natural spring of creativity, as she recreates the four personalities described in this engaging work with empathy, candidness and wit, approaching its technical challenges with consummate elasticity. A no-less challenging undertaking is Sonata Op. 39 by Hungarian-American Miklós Rózsa, a composer mostly known for his film music. Like Bach, he also chose to write unaccompanied solo pieces for various instruments, indeed, specifying that they were concert pieces and not technical exercises. Growing up in Hungary, he had heard a lot of folk music, which was always unaccompanied. Elements of folk song/dance are interspersed throughout the work, whose course comprises both lyrical sections and unleashed, zesty virtuosic moments. The above-mentioned pieces are played on a modern flute by Lillian Burkart, Boston.

 

A highlight of the disc is Johann Sebastian Bach's Partita in A minor for solo flute, also known as “Solo pour la flûte traversière”. Shemer guides the listener through the work’s beauty and uniqueness, as she presents the complexity and enigmatic path of the Allemande with suspense, the bariolage writing of the Corrente with playfulness and strategic timing and the Sarabande in solemn introspection, to conclude with the bracing rustic Bourrée Angloise offered with a touch of whimsy. The artist’s imaginative ornamenting adds much interest as does the robust, pithy timbre of the J.H.Rottenburgh traverso (c.1740), a copy by R.Tutz (Innsbruck).

 

A major part of the disc, offering short pieces interspersed between the other works, is devoted to examples of works from “L’Art de préluder sur la flûte traversière” (The Art of Preluding on the Transverse Flute) by the influential French Baroque flautist/composer/teacher Jacques-Martin Hotteterre, one of the most illustrious figures in the history of the transverse flute and the French school of wind instrument playing. In the liner notes, Shemer refers to the function of these short pieces as being “tonal preparation before the performance of a longer work or as constituting a solo cadenza…or even as a basis for improvisation.”. It was Hotteterre who brought the flute full respectability through his writings and pieces. Shemer’s playing of these miniatures - none even reaching two minutes in length – presents each as a perfect and complete work; she probes their melodic interest, their changes of mood and character and their Italian-style instrumental brilliance, with its prevalence for longer melodic lines, as against the subtleties of French courtly musical language. Engaging in some lavish ornamentation, her playing is dazzling and uplifting, but always charming and delightful, indeed, displaying the art of performance required when addressing the musical miniature. The Hotteterre pieces are performed on a copy of a J.Denner traverso flute (c.1720) by R. Tutz (Innsbruck).

 

No disc of solo flute music would be complete without a performance of “Syrinx” (La Flûte de Pan) by Claude Debussy, written in 1913 as incidental music to a dramatic poem by Gabriel Mourey, its text based on the myth of Psyché. Shaping and sculpting the composer’s ever-enigmatic melodic course, Shemer’s bold yet beguiling sound captures the rapture and sensuousness of the work, as its phrases, like tears or sighs, fall to their end, with the piece culminating in a final diminuendo on a descending whole tone scale.

 

Recorded in 2017 by CedarHouse Sound & Mastering, New Hampshire, USA for the Omnibus CLASSICS label, the disc’s true, lively sound quality does justice to Idit Shemer’s fine reading and interpretation of the works heard here, making for a rewarding listening experience. Born in Jerusalem, Idit Shemer is principal flautist of the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra, chamber musician and a prominent flute teacher. With an interest in contemporary music, she has performed and recorded works composed for her. Other recordings include music of W.F.Bach and Philippe Gaubert.