Category: What I’m listening to….

Following on the heels of his recording of music from the court of Frederick the Great, Emmanuel Pahud released an album, Revolution, of recordings of concertos by Devienne, Gianella, Gluck and Pleyel, composers of late Classical period. While a bit diverse in terms of nationality, they all had a strong connection to France, each having lived there and composed within its musical milieu. Devienne and Gianella were also flute players, Devienne in particular a player of great repute.

Pahud provides both an elegance and febrile urgency to these pieces which is both amazing to listen to as a flutist and very pleasant and stylish in a more general-listening sense. I like how closely curated the music is to make the Revolution theme of the album title come alive. The precision and elegance of the Kammerorchester Basel is also on-point and the prominent blare of the horns in the classical orchestrations really sounds convincing in terms of Period performance.

I find especially lovely the contrasting brilliant bluster and tenderness of his performance of Devienne’s concerto no. 7, a real favourite concerto of mine from my childhood.

This is a recording of late Baroque/Roccoco works for flute and orchestra with Emmanuel Pahud and the great English Baroque specialist Trevor Pinnock, leading the Kammerakadamie Potsdam.

Great recording. Pahud as usual shows tremendous vivacity within the technical brilliance and stylistic acumen. All his playing exhibits a lovely rubato to show dynamism so typical of this period of flute music with its emfindsamer Stil. Pahud’s breath in particular is so lively and dynamic, there’s none of the stasis one can hear in other (even really good) flute-players. You hear constant motion and design.

Stylistically, while he doesn’t sound like he’s slavishly parroting a Baroque flute, Pahud makes a powerful reinterpretation of these early Rococo and Classical works, making the most of the brilliance and power of the modern flute with the sensitivity of a Baroque flute. That’s a hell of a rare and hard combination to achieve as the feel and blowing styles of the instruments are very different.

All playing shows period-aware performance practice across the board. Must also be a help having someone like Pinnock – a bit of a legend in Period-performance circles – on board!

Of the works themselves, a highlight is the recording of Quantz’s Concerto in G major. While Pahud is good enough to make even Fredrick the Great’s concerto sound engaging, he really brings out the invention in pieces like Quantz’s.

In a blast-from-the-past, I’m listening again to Galway playing Joaquin Rodrigo as I’m playing Rodrigo’s Canario, the last movement of Fantasia para un Gentilhombre, in a little concert in the school I teach at on Sydney’s lower North Shore.

I haven’t played this since I was 12 so it’s really a walk down memory lane for me.

Recorded in 1979, this recording has got Galway at the absolute top of his game, playing the Fantasia and also the fiendish Concerto Pastorale, written for Galway by Rodrigo himself.

I listen to this and it’s just quintessential Galway – the relentlessly powerful tone (even in piano!), impeccable technique. Straightforward, but impeccable, phrasing. He’s the flute player everyone has to have an opinion about – the Heifetz of the flute, the most influential player of the 20th century. And you hear it all in this recording.

I first heard Michael Martin Kofler back in 1994 or so at a flute convention in Frankfurt am Main. He had already held his job as Principal Flute with the Munich Philharmonic for some years and his performance (of Rodrigo’s Flute Concerto, no less) was amazing. Just brutally, relentlessly powerful but also gorgeous playing.

And so he is in Jeux à Deux: Recital for Flute and Harp. Lots of seamless, effortless beauty. An impeccable golden tone somewhat in the manner of James Galway. A luminous tone in Ibert’s Pièce in particular but also lots of delicate playing in his Bach interpretations.

I often forget the level of refinement but also intensity players like Kofler can show. The quality and intensity of his playing is something I need to remind myself of in my day-to-day playing and teaching.

This is a recording by the great Swiss flutist, Emmanuel Pahud and our own Australian Chamber Orchestra, led by Richard Tognetti, of the Six Concertos Op. 10 by Antonio Vivaldi. The concertos themselves are pillars of the flute repertoire, even though they were originally composed for recorder.

What can I say about this? It’s hands-down the best, most charismatic and consistently musically-compelling recording of these concertos around. Even Period musicians don’t play with this balance of good musicality and flat-out imagination.

I never tire of listening to this recording. I think there was real chemistry between Pahud and Tognetti – both very imaginative musicians. Intensely evocative playing of already naturalistic music. And they’re playing modern instruments with GREAT period-correct style.

Pahud’s playing on a technical level is otherworldly of course, but he is never just showboating. I honestly listen to his playing all the time and it makes me stop and think, and listen again. Totally informs my playing on a musical AND technical level that I don’t find with any other player. Not that there aren’t many other great players around, but Pahud is the complete package in ways I continually find illuminating.

I just came across this recording on Apple Music of the flute player, Jean-Louis Beaumardier.

Lovely piccolo playing – and C and Alto flute! Sweet, lighter tone, and sensitive French School playing. He is a student of Jean-Pierre Rampal’s and sounds great, especially playing the French pieces such as Debussy’s Syrinx.

Great febrile, dynamic feel to playing to playing, the vibrato is very alive, rubato is feels impulsive (however planned out it truly is!) Lovely alto flute playing on pieces like Jolivet’s Incantation.