Fiona's Flute. Dialogue. PETER RACINE FRICKER: Two S0e113 for Solo Flute. Bullade for Flute and Piano, Op. 68
1985; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2291-2436
Autores Tópico(s)Music History and Culture
ResumoSpells: Jack Behrens: Fiona's Flute. Dialogue. PETER RACINE FRICKER: Two Spells for Solo Flute. Ballade for Flute and Piano, Op. 68. Bagatelles for Clarinet and Piano, Op. 83. Jack Behrens, piano; Robert Riseling, clarinet; Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, violoncello; Fiona Wilkinson, flute. ORION MASTER RECORDINGS ORS 83455 (Available from: P.O. Box 4087, Malibu, California 90265). This attractive record of five recent works provides an enjoyable sample of the music of two transplanted composers: Jack Behrens, since 1981 the Dean of the Faculty of Music of the University of Western Ontario, was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and taught at California State College at Bakersfield, Simon Fraser University and the University of Regina before arriving at Western, while Peter Racine Fricker, after twelve years as the Director of Music of Morley College and Professor at the Royal College of Music in his native London, England, joined the Faculty of the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1964. While neither composer amazes the listener with a sense of striking freshness or originality in his music, both are highly competent and capable of moments of genuine feeling. I find myself most attracted to the two works by Behrens that open the record. The pitch structures of Fiona's Flute (1982), dedicated to Fiona Wilkinson and her newly acquired flute, are all derived from a kind of soggetto cavato, based on the flutist's name: two superimposed sets, one ascending and chromatic (F-F-sharp-G-G-sharp-A), and the other descending and whole-tone (F-E-flat-D-flat-B-A), are transcriptions of FIONA (F=F, I=F-sharp/E-flat, 0=G/D-flat, N=G-sharp/B, A=A), and the remaining four pitches, an ascending whole-tone set (B-flat-C-D-E), are assigned to the consonants WLKS in WILKINSON (W=B-flat, I=Fsharp/E-flat, L=C, K=D, I=F-sharp/E-flat, N=G-sharp/B, S=E, O=G/D-flat, N=G-sharp/B). While this may sound somewhat dry and academic in description, the results are anything but. One may take a certain pleasure in recognizing the flutist's signature as it reappears throughout the piece (indeed, at one point, her name is sounded in Morse Code on a repeated B-flat), but Behrens' talent for creating memorable melodic/rhythmic shapes transcends the extramusical associations of the pitch material and the listener is quickly drawn into the purely musical flow of the work. So, too, with his second work, Dialogues (1981) for violoncello and piano, dedicated to Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi - the program note quotes several dictionary definitions of the title, and one might expect with dread yet another example of the ubiquitous dialogue piece, but Behrens's handling of a small number of musical gestures is unfailingly interesting. Particularly effective passages for the cello include the rich, aggressively droning multiple stops at the opening, the slowly oscillating C/E - Aflat/D double stops under delicate piano lines a few minutes into the work, and the poignant return of the same figure over a C pedal at the close of the piece. The clearly articulated formal outlines and the consistent use of a rather rhetorical (usually three-fold) repetition of individual phrases contribute greatly to the success and the accessibility of these works, as do the fine performances - Wilkinson projects a full, rich and varied tonal palette (marred only by an occasional tendency to splat in rapid staccato passages in the upper register), while Tsutsumi and Behrens are utterly convincing. …
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