Thank you for coming to my recital! Below are notes on each piece in the program
Sonata in A minor for solo flute, H. 562 (1747)
C.P.E. Bach (1714-1788)
C.P.E. Bach’s Sonata for flauto traverso in A minor (Wq 132) is one of the most significant works for solo flute. It was composed around 1747 while Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach resided in Berlin and was employed as a chamber harpsichordist by the German King, Frederick the Great. Since the music composed for the king wasn't allowed to be published at the time, the sonata became publicly available only in 1763. The sonata in A minor consists of three movements: Poco adagio, Allegro, and Allegro. In addition to baroque style, which was influenced by Carl Philip Emanuel's father, Johann Sebastian Bach, the sonata has some features of the Galant style, which is characterized by slow and simple harmonic motion and clear, singable melodies.
Sonata, Op. 94 (1943)
S. Prokofiev (1891-1953)
In 1943, during the Second World War, Sergey Prokofiev was in Perm to discuss staging his ballet Cinderella with the evacuated Kirov company. There he completed a Flute Sonata, Op 94. According to his biographer Israel Nestyev, its themes had been sketched before the war, inspired by the French flute player Georges Barrère. The Sonata became even more famous in a version for violin, transcribed at the suggestion and with the assistance of the Soviet violinist David Oistrakh.
The opening movement harks back to the neoclassical style of Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 5 of 1923 (which in turn appears to have inspired Poulenc’s Flute Sonata of 1956-7) as well as Cinderella. The second movement scherzo is initially light and capricious, but the piano part in particular introduces an increasingly sardonic tone, and the movement does not so much finish as precipitously wind up. There are further hints of disquieted emotions in the third movement, which has some thematic material in common with the third movement of Prokofiev’s then not yet completed tragic Violin Sonata in F minor. It also contains a striking passage of bluesy rumination: an admirer of jazz, Prokofiev at one stage held semi-clandestine meetings with fellow aficionados in his Moscow apartment in which he played recordings he had brought back from his foreign tours. Ultimately, though, the Sonata ends with an upbeat finale which includes, in a central interlude, one of Prokofiev’s sweetest melodies (which Poulenc, again, would recall in his Oboe Sonata, dedicated to Prokofiev’s memory).
Duo for Flute and Clarinet, Op. 24 (1991)
R. Muczynski (1929-2010)
Robert Muczynski (1929-2010) was an American pianist, teacher, and composer who earned his BM and MM from DePaul University as a student of Walter Knupfer (piano) and Alexander Tcherepnin (composition). As a pianist, he made his Carnegie Hall debut in 1958 with a program of his own works. As an educator, he served as long-time composer-in-residence and chair of the composition department at the University of Arizona. As a composer, his Sonata for Flute and Piano, Op. 14 (1961), Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano (1970), and Time Pieces for clarinet and piano (1984) have all become a part of the standard repertoire. The hallmarks of his compositional style are accented, rhythmically-driven fast movements, often in irregular meters, and slow movements with unpretentious lyricism.
Muczynski’s Duos, Op. 24 for flute and clarinet have a copyright date of 1991, however, the opus number precedes that of the version of this work for two flutes (Op. 34, 1974). The six short pieces included in this collection of duos are the epitome of Muczynski. The first movements features a melodic flute obligato over a slowly ascending clarinet line. The second movement is a jaunty mixed meter dance that alternates between 5/8, 2/8, and 6/8. The flute and clarinet trade expressive melodic lines in the third movement before joining together for one measure at the dynamic peak. The fourth movement explores the juxtaposition of unison passages with rhythmically complex simultaneous simple and compound subdivisions of the beat. The fifth movement is perhaps the most lyrical and expressive of the collection. The final movement is an accented, molto perpetuo stream of eighth notes that race to an exciting conclusion.
Flute Poetic (2009)
J. Higdon (B. 1962)
Jennifer Higdon burst onto the American music scene more than twenty years ago, when her Concerto for Orchestra was featured at the flagship concert of the 2002 American Symphony Orchestra League meeting. That electrifying performance was greeted enthusiastically by the League audience and by the many prominent critics in attendance. The warm reception accorded to Higdon’s Concerto led to performances by dozens of other orchestras in the United States. Since then, Ms. Higdon has fulfilled the promise of that work.
Her Blue Cathedral has become one of the most frequently performed American orchestral works. Her Violin Concerto won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in music, and she has won three Grammys for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. Higdon served on the composition faculty of the Curtis Institute from 1994 to 2021. She continues to maintain a busy schedule fulfilling commissions. A native of Brooklyn, Jennifer Higdon grew up in Atlanta and Seymour, Tennessee. She holds degrees from Bowling Green and University of Pennsylvania and an Artist Diploma from Curtis. Her composition teachers have included George Crumb and Ned Rorem. Ms. Higdon is also an accomplished flutist and conductor.
Flute Poetic was commissioned by Jan Vinci and Pola Baytelman and premiered on November 13, 2010, at The Arthur Zankel Music Center at Skidmore College. Higdon differentiates the purpose and mood in the three movements, with contrasting aesthetics of musical poetry gathering in a single work. Musical techniques in the movements include contour, pandiatonicism (a musical technique that involves using the diatonic scale and chords to create a diatonic key or mode without emphasizing a single note as the tonal center), whole tone mixing, and the concept of metrical dissonance