Musical Instruments

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Music

      To Express the Sound of a Country’s Soul, He Invented New Instruments

      by

      The imbaluna, one of the invented instruments by Joaquín Orellana on view at the Americas Society.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesSkip to contentSkip to site indexTo Express the Sound of a Country’s Soul, He Invented New InstrumentsThe Guatemalan composer, inventor and writer Joaquín Orellana’s creations are the subject of the Americas Society exhibition “The Spine of Music.”The imbaluna, one of the invented instruments by Joaquín Orellana on view at the Americas Society.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyFeb. 19, 2021, 12:48 p.m. ETIn a short story, the Guatemalan composer, inventor and writer Joaquín Orellana imagines a musician who, dissatisfied with the instruments of Western civilization, sets out to create the sound of hunger. Possessed with a desire to express his people’s suffering, he progressively starves himself, then records his altered, raving voice. In his delirium, he sees sheet music staves come alive with anguished and violent cries — the sound of hunger.Orellana, 90, is one of his country’s most respected composers and the subject of a captivating exhibition at the Americas Society, “The Spine of Music,” which showcases instruments — sculptural, Surrealist and darkly sensuous — he has invented. Like the protagonist of his story, Orellana seeks to express the suffering of a country traumatized by genocide and civil war, while largely shunning the materials of Western music.Orellana with the herroím, one of his “útiles sonoros,” or sound tools.Credit…via Studio of Joaquín OrellanaMost composers write music for instruments that already exist. One exception was Wagner, who created a tuba-horn hybrid for his “Ring” cycle. The experimentalist composer Harry Partch invented instruments adapted to his unorthodox tuning system. In a video interview from Guatemala City, Orellana spoke of his process as one of liberating the musical imagination from preconceived forms.“The composer is imbued with his social reality,” he said. “The composer is a kind of filter, and his social sensibility is integrated into that filter.” When musical ideas flood the composer’s imagination, he added, “in that auditory mind there are the concepts and images of a social context, a sociopolitical reality; and the music is inevitably beholden to these things.”Orellana began experimenting with the materials of sound production in the 1970s. He had studied violin and composition at the National Conservatory in Guatemala City, then won a two-year fellowship at the Centro Latinoamericano de Altos Estudios Musicales in Buenos Aires. That center was a magnet for innovative composers from across the subcontinent, with a state-of-the-art electronic music studio that fired Orellana’s imagination.Sebastian Zubieta, the Americas Society music director, playing Orellana’s sinusoido pequeño.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesCredit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesHe didn’t have comparable technical resources when he returned to Guatemala. And he felt alienated from a music scene centered on folkloric traditions expressed through the national instrument, the marimba.Still, the marimba fascinated Orellana. It had most likely come over on the slave routes from West Africa; embraced by the rural population in Guatemala, it had come to resonate with his country’s hopes, pain and injustices. So he pried it apart and twisted it into new forms.Orellana calls his inventions “útiles sonoros,” or sound tools. “By means of the sound tools,” he said, “the marimba extends into acoustic and physical space as in a kind of Big Bang.”The imbaluna, a portmanteau of “marimba” and the Spanish word for moon.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesThe first sound tool to greet visitors to the Americas Society gallery is the skeletal imbaluna, with a crescent-shaped marimba keyboard backed by spiky resonators. (The names of Orellana’s inventions are often poetic portmanteaus, this one of “marimba” and the Spanish word for moon.)The circumar is shaped like a large kettle with marimba keys suspended perpendicular to the floor. For the sinusoido, he strung marimba keys on a frame shaped like a warped roller coaster. Both are played by running a mallet along the inside in continuous motion — an action that requires full engagement of the performer’s arm and torso and produces tinkling rushes of sound. Sebastián Zubieta, the Americas Society music director, said that in Mr. Orellana’s creations, “it’s the gesture that shapes it.”These instruments — and others shaped similarly, using metal chimes or bamboo canes — can sound uncannily like electronic music. Zubieta said it was no accident that sounds created on a circular or sinusoid instrument resemble those created through electronic looping and sequencing. “It’s like an old tape piece,” he said. “It’s a low-tech solution to an avant-garde desire.”The herroím.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesThe cirlum pequeño.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesThe periomin.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesThe prehimulinho.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesThe ingenuity of Orellana’s inventions often hovers between playfulness and cruelty. The periomin is a kind of rocking coat rack that, when set in motion, makes wind chimes swing back and forth along strings of plastic beads, sounding like a glassy waterfall. The pinzafer is a large iron sheet, shaped like a lobster tail and suspended from an iron frame. Running a bow, strung with piano wire, through a serrated cutout produces a dark, metallic moan. Drawing a bow (this one strung with acrylic) over the tubarc, a metal chime fixed on a rectangular frame, produces a whistle sharp enough to make teeth fizz.In his compositions, Orellana often uses his inventions alongside choral singing, taped environmental sounds and Western instruments. In 2017, he wrote “Symphony From the Third World” for Documenta 14 in Athens; he flooded the stage with adult and children’s choirs, a symphony orchestra and his sound tools. It was a rejoinder to Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony, subtitled “From the New World.”An instrument called the CF A.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesFor the Americas Society exhibition, he composed a new piece exclusively for his creations. Titled “Puntos y efluvios” (“Outpours and Dots”), it was intended to be performed by four percussionists inside the gallery, and would have invited audience members to participate at certain moments with screams, howls and cries in a language Orellana invented.Because of pandemic limitations, Zubieta recorded each part by himself; the edited piece, with its pinprick tinkles and squalls of booming rushes, now haunts the gallery at regular intervals. An accompanying video alternates between shots of the performer engaged in the music’s ritualistic gestures and images of Orellana’s graphic score — which, with rhythmic squiggles, dot clusters and choreographic diagrams, harks back to the vision in his short story of sheet music staves melting away.Zubieta playing the lenguatón.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesLooking back on his career, Orellana said, “Making music for me was never a determinate process, but rather a way to free myself from obsessions: the obsession to manifest sound and a certain compulsive need to get it out of me.”“I’ve come to the conclusion,” he added, “that what I’m trying to do is liberate sound.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 163 Shares139 Views

      in Music

      Hear the Sound of a Seashell Horn Found in an Ancient French Cave

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTrilobitesHear the Sound of a Seashell Horn Found in an Ancient French CaveMusic from the large conch probably hadn’t been heard by human ears for 17,000 years.The shell of Charonia lampas recovered from the Marsoulas cave in the Pyrenees of France.Credit…C. Fritz, Muséum d’Histoire naturelle de ToulouseFeb. 10, 2021Updated 5:10 p.m. ETIn 1931, researchers working in southern France unearthed a large seashell at the entrance to a cave. Unremarkable at first glance, it languished for decades in the collections of a nearby natural history museum.Now, a team has reanalyzed the roughly foot-long conch shell using modern imaging technology. They concluded that the shell had been deliberately chipped and punctured to turn it into a musical instrument. It’s an extremely rare example of a “seashell horn” from the Paleolithic period, the team concluded. And it still works — a musician recently coaxed three notes from the 17,000-year-old shell.Listen to a Recording of the Seashell HornWhen the conch was played by a musician, it produced notes that were similar to C, C-sharp, and D.“I needed a lot of air to maintain the sound,” said Jean-Michel Court, who performed the demonstration and is also a musicologist at the University of Toulouse.The Marsoulas Cave, in the foothills of the French Pyrenees, has long fascinated researchers with its colorful paintings depicting bison, horses and humans. It’s where the enormous tan-colored conch shell was first discovered, an incongruous object that must have been transported from the Atlantic Ocean, over 150 miles away.Despite its heft, the shell, from the sea snail Charonia lampas, gradually slipped into oblivion. Presumed to be nothing more than a drinking vessel, the conch sat for over 80 years in the Natural History Museum of Toulouse.Another view of the shell.Credit…C. Fritz and G. ToselloA conch from New Zealand and its mouthpiece made of a decorated bone tube.Credit…Musée du Quai Branly, Jacques ChiracOnly in 2016 did researchers begin to analyze the shell anew. Artifacts like this conch help paint a picture of how cave dwellers lived, said Carole Fritz, an archaeologist at the University of Toulouse who has been studying the cave and its paintings for over 20 years. “It’s difficult to study cave art without cultural context.”Dr. Fritz and her colleagues started by assembling a three-dimensional digital model of the conch. They immediately noticed that some parts of its shell looked peculiar. For starters, a portion of its outer lip had been chipped away. That left behind a smooth edge, quite unlike Charonia lampas, said Gilles Tosello, a prehistorian and visual artist also at the University of Toulouse. “Normally, they’re very irregular.”The apex of the conch was also broken off, the team found. That’s the most robust part of the shell, and it’s unlikely that such a fracture would have occurred naturally. Indeed, further analysis showed that the shell had been struck repeatedly — and precisely — near its apex. The researchers also noted a brown residue, perhaps remnants of clay or beeswax, around the broken apex.The mystery deepened when the team used CT scans and a tiny medical camera to examine the inside of the conch. They found a hole, roughly half an inch in diameter, that ran inward from the broken apex and pierced the shell’s interior structure.An ancient painting in Marsoulas cave. Credit…C. Fritz and G. ToselloAll of these modifications were intentional, the researchers believe. The smoothed outer lip would have made the conch easier to hold, and the broken apex and adjacent hole would have allowed a mouthpiece — possibly the hollow bone of a bird — to be inserted into the shell. The result was a musical instrument, the team concluded in their study, which was published Wednesday in Science Advances.This shell might have been played during ceremonies or used to summon gatherings, said Julien Tardieu, another Toulouse researcher who studies sound perception. Cave settings tend to amplify sound, said Dr. Tardieu. “Playing this conch in a cave could be very loud and impressive.”It would also have been a beautiful sight, the researchers suggest, because the conch is decorated with red dots — now faded — that match the markings found on the cave’s walls.This discovery is believable, said Miriam Kolar, an archaeoacoustician at Amherst College in Massachusetts who studies conch horn shells but was not involved in the research. “There’s compelling evidence that the shell was modified by humans to be a sound-producing instrument.”While other “seashell horns” have been found in places like New Zealand and Peru, none are as old as this conch.Dr. Fritz said it was incredible to hear Dr. Court play the conch. Its music hadn’t been heard by human ears for many millenniums, which made the experience particularly moving, she said.“It was a fantastic moment.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Times's Five Minutes Series on Classical Music a Hit

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeExplore: A Cubist CollageFollow: Cooking AdviceVisit: Famous Old HomesLearn: About the VaccineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHooking Readers on Classical Music, Five Minutes at a TimeDrawing on the passion of experts, a Culture desk series has doubled its audience for the genre.CreditCredit…Angie WangFeb. 3, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETMark Hamill was spellbound by a Mozart composition, but he couldn’t remember its name. The haunting choral masterpiece played near the end of the Broadway production of “Amadeus” more than 40 years ago, in which he performed the title role.So when Mr. Hamill, the actor who portrayed Luke Skywalker in “Star Wars,” was approached in June 2020 by Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times’s classical music editor, to suggest an irresistible Mozart piece, he responded with one request: Can you track it down?With some help from the team at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Mr. Woolfe identified the mystery earworm: a section of Mozart’s Requiem. Mr. Hamill played the composer hundreds of times on Broadway and in the first national tour of “Amadeus” in the early 1980s. But, he told Mr. Woolfe, “I never got tired of the sound.”Mr. Woolfe chatted with Mr. Hamill for the Mozart installment of The Times’s classical music appreciation series, “5 Minutes That Will Make You Love _____.” Once a month online, about 15 musicians, pop-culture figures and Times writers and editors each select the piece they would play for a friend tied to a theme, be it an instrument, composer, genre or voice type. This month’s theme, published today, is string quartets.The series aims to make classical music as accessible to readers as a Top 40 track, Mr. Woolfe said. You don’t need to know the difference between a cadenza and a concerto. “It’s about pure pleasure and exploration,” he said.Now two and a half years and a dozen segments into the project, Mr. Woolfe said he had been surprised at readers’ appetite for the series, regardless of the theme. “It’s like, ‘OK, ‘5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Mozart’ is super appealing,’” he said. “But ‘5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Baroque Music’? Or ‘5 Minutes That Will Make You Love 21st-Century Composers’? But those both did terrifically as well.”The name for the series came to him in the shower in 2018 as he was pondering ways he could make The Times’s classical music coverage accessible to a broader audience. “I was thinking about being at a concert or listening to a recording, and being like, ‘OMG, that note she hit!’” Mr. Woolfe said. “Then I had the idea of asking different people to pick their favorite little five-minute nuggets and presenting them like a playlist.”The first installment, in which he asked artists like Julia Bullock, the young, velvety-voiced soprano, and Nicholas Britell, the composer of the Oscar-nominated score for “Moonlight,” to choose the five minutes they would play to make their friends fall in love with classical music, became a runaway hit with readers, racking up more than 400,000 page views in its first week alone.That reception inspired him to expand the series — first to individual instruments like the piano, then to genres like opera and composers like Mozart and Beethoven. And the pandemic motivated him to ramp up the pace: Since last April, new segments have published on the first Wednesday of every month.“It has doubled our audience for classical music,” Mr. Woolfe said. “It’s gratifying that whatever we do, people are willing to explore and be into it.” But he added that he had been happy to hear that classical aficionados have enjoyed the series, too.David Allen, a freelance critic for The Times and a frequent contributor to “5 Minutes,” said he targeted both novices and experts with his selections. “I sometimes have thought deeply about finding pieces that are off the beaten track,” he said, like a little-heard piece from Bach’s organ music or a movement from a Mozart serenade.Mr. Woolfe also credited the appeal to the series’s vibrant, eye-catching animations, like pulsating cello strings or a silhouette of Mozart caught in a colorful confetti storm. “They enhance the playfulness and accessibility of the series,” he said.Angie Wang, the freelance illustrator who creates them, said she watched videos of the musicians and noted their characteristic movements, paying particularly close attention to wrist and elbow articulation. “I wanted to render them with delicacy,” she said. “The animations are a kind of visualization for the music.”One of Mr. Woolfe’s favorite aspects of working on the series has been getting to know artists outside the performance context in which he typically encounters them (“Renée Fleming is a really good writer,” he said), as well as talking to notable names outside the classical music world about a subject they are rarely, if ever, asked to discuss.“I get to see how people think in addition to how they perform,” he said. “It’s another facet of the personalities of artists.”Although the series was not conceived as an antidote to the polarization that has gripped politics and public health in the past year, Mr. Woolfe is glad it has worked out that way. “I’m so happy it’s been counterprogramming for people during the pandemic,” he said. “And I hope they’ll keep listening.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      5 Minutes That Will Make You Love the Flute

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story5 Minutes That Will Make You Love the FluteIt’s an instrument based on the most fundamental sign of life: breath. Listen to the best music ever written for it.Credit…Angie WangJan. 6, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETIn the past, we’ve chosen the five minutes or so we would play to make our friends fall in love with classical music, the piano, opera, the cello, Mozart, 21st-century composers, the violin, Baroque music, sopranos and Beethoven.Now we want to convince those curious friends to love the flute. We hope you find lots here to discover and enjoy; leave your choices in the comments.◆ ◆ ◆Nathalie Stutzmann, conductor and singerThe flute is one of humanity’s oldest ways of producing a beautiful sound, and it is based on the most fundamental sign of life: breath. Made from bones, wood or reeds, the earliest specimens date from the Paleolithic era. The flute is often associated with things elegiac, poetic, angelic — with purity — but also with the world of magic; in mythology, Orpheus seduces the underworld playing the flute. In this excerpt from Gluck’s Orpheus opera, the flute is extremely sensual, and, with its lyrical soaring, takes us from earthly pleasures to heavenly ones.Gluck’s “Dance of the Blessed Spirits”Emmanuel Pahud (EMI)◆ ◆ ◆James Galway, flutistJohann Joachim Quantz was a German flutist and flute maker who composed hundreds of sonatas and concertos for the instrument. Every time he wrote something, Frederick the Great, his student, would pay him a high sum, equivalent to the price of a cow for every concerto. He died immensely wealthy. This is the third movement of Quantz’s Concerto in G, a piece I learned when I was a child.Quantz’s Concerto in GJames Galway; Jörg Faerber conducting Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn (RCA Victor)◆ ◆ ◆Ian Anderson, Jethro Tull leaderTwenty-odd years ago, I made the acquaintance of a protégé of the renowned flutist James Galway. The youngish upstart was Andrea Griminelli, who invited me to participate in a concert — an adventurous union for a serious classical soloist and a noisy, irreverent rock musician. I wrote, and we recorded, a duet, “Griminelli’s Lament.” We still perform it, and Andrea often does a beautiful piece written by his other pal, Ennio Morricone: “Gabriel’s Oboe,” the theme from the movie “The Mission.” In this tune, Andrea combines his impeccable nuance and technique with a pop sensibility that many classical players lack.Ennio Morricone’s “Gabriel’s Oboe”Andrea Griminelli◆ ◆ ◆Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, Times writerDai Fujikura, the composer of this haunting soliloquy for bass flute, likens it to “a plume of cold air which is floating silently between the peaks of a very icy cold landscape, slowly but cutting like a knife.” Listen to Claire Chase cast a spell with sounds that seem to belong to a different geological age, like gusts of wind strafing the mouth of a cave. Some notes splinter in two or dissolve into thin air, while, here and there, you can hear the ghost of a human voice channeled through the instrument.Dai Fujikura’s “Glacier”Claire Chase (New Focus)◆ ◆ ◆Brian Lehrer, WNYC hostHubert Laws is best known as a jazz flutist, but he was classically trained at the Juilliard School and has long included interpretations of classical music in his repertoire. This joyful Bach arrangement, from his 1971 album “The Rite of Spring,” is great for people who like jazz but aren’t much into classical — or if you’re not into either, it could make you fall in love with both! Listen for the beautiful and original cadenza at the beginning, after which you will recognize Bach, sometimes in a jazz vein, sometimes straighter. (And if you have nine more minutes, check out his haunting then soaring take on Ravel’s “Boléro,” which starts with a rare bass flute passage and follows through with a blissful Chick Corea piano solo.)“Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 (Second Movement)”Hubert Laws (CTI)◆ ◆ ◆Brandon Patrick George, flutistC.P.E. Bach’s flute concertos date from his tenure at the court of Frederick the Great, who was also a flutist, and they’re brilliant representations of the Sturm und Drang movement of the 18th century, which sought to heighten the emotional impact of art. In the final movement of the Concerto in D minor, the orchestra surges violently, setting the stage for five minutes of unrelenting flute virtuosity, often interrupted by dramatic silences and startling harmonic twists. When I perform it, I love observing the audience’s astonishment; it brews a storm unlike any other flute concerto.C.P.E. Bach’s Concerto in D minorEmmanuel Pahud; Trevor Pinnock conducting Kammerakademie Potsdam (Warner Classics)◆ ◆ ◆Unsuk Chin, composerThe piano, my instrument, was perfected in the 19th century; hence, it can be challenging for contemporary composers to reinvent it. It is different with the flute, which has not always been in wide use as a solo instrument. In his five Études, from 1974, Isang Yun expanded the possibilities of the flute by drawing inspiration from both contemporary Western approaches and traditional Korean music, including ancient instruments like the piri and daegeum.Isang Yun’s Étude No. 5Yubeen Kim◆ ◆ ◆David Allen, Times writerIt’s best to take the composer and conductor Pierre Boulez at his word: “The flute of the Faun brought new breath to the art of music; what was overthrown was not so much the art of development as the very concept of form itself.” If Debussy’s “Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un Faune” did, indeed, represent the start of musical modernity, what a start: sinuous, shapely, sensuous. The flute comes to the fore in music that enchants in its ebb and flow, that makes you fall in love with the orchestra, and the flute, all over again.Debussy’s “Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un Faune”Joshua Smith; Pierre Boulez conducting Cleveland Orchestra (Deutsche Grammophon)◆ ◆ ◆Anna Clyne, composerI’m often drawn to the remarkable warmth of the flute’s lower register — for example, the opening of Debussy’s “Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un Faune” — and I particularly love the bass flute. Marcos Balter’s “Pessoa,” for six of them, shows off this instrument in an unusual and beautiful way: It weaves a sighing quality with vocalizing and pitches that bend, throat fluttering and key clicks that shift in stereo effect, and multiple pitches stacked to create resonant pads of sound.Marcos Balter’s “Pessoa”Claire Chase (New Focus)◆ ◆ ◆Nicole Mitchell, flutist and composerNo matter the style of the music or the cultural context it sings from, it’s the flute’s ability to pierce the heart that moves me most. “The Price of Everything,” from “Suite for Frida Kahlo,” is one of my favorites from the phenomenal James Newton. He is celebrated as a jazz flutist, but, like many creative musicians, also has an active career composing for orchestras and classical ensembles. In this piece, he sings with his huge sound through the upper register with effortlessness and grace. In our times of strife, his brilliant playing and the piece’s title remind us what’s really important: to seek humanity in one another.James Newton’s “The Price of Everything”James Newton Ensemble (Sledgehammer Blues)◆ ◆ ◆James Schlefer, shakuhachi playerFresh out of college with a degree in flute performance and starting graduate school in music history, I first heard the shakuhachi at a house concert and knew I had to pursue that penetrating sound. But when I tried playing one that day, I could not make a noise. I borrowed a shakuhachi, found my first teacher and have devoted the last four decades to its study, performance and teaching. It is a rigorous tradition, remarkably compatible with Western classical music. A formative recording for me was Kohachiro Miyata performing “Honshirabe.” It led me to the understanding that music is not only sound, but also silence.“Honshirabe”Kohachiro Miyata (Nonesuch)◆ ◆ ◆Claire Chase, flutistThese exhilarating four minutes hooked me to this little tube of metal when I was 13, and they keep me hooked to this day. By turns aching, luring, wailing like a siren and bursting into lyricism, this is music that grabs the listener and refuses to let go. There is no solo flute piece like it. “Density 21.5” unfurled genre-dissolving possibilities for the instrument and its repertoire, inspiring performances by titans of avant-garde jazz and classical music alike; Harvey Sollberger’s 1975 rendition still shakes me with its honesty, brutality and grace.Varèse’s “Density 21.5”Harvey Sollberger◆ ◆ ◆Joshua Barone, Times editorYou could put together a list of flute highlights drawing solely on Claire Chase’s “Density 2036,” her astonishing project to commission new solo programs each of the 23 years leading up to the centennial of Varèse’s “Density 21.5.” These premieres have already offered an encyclopedic vision of the instrument — sometimes even within a single piece, like Marcos Balter’s “Pan.” This is myth told through music, but it’s also a tour of the flute family (panpipes included, of course) and the possibilities of full-body performance, leading to the final “Soliloquy”: an ending at once chattering, claustrophobic and darkly sensuous.Marcos Balter’s “Pan”Claire Chase (Corbett vs. Dempsey)◆ ◆ ◆Zachary Woolfe, Times classical music editorOne of the most luscious flute solos in the repertory actually depicts the creation of the first flute. Near the end of the ballet “Daphnis et Chloé,” Daphnis is pretending to be the god Pan, who formed reeds into pipes — panpipes! — to musically mourn the loss of a nymph he was pursuing. But in Ravel’s sultry score, the song that emerges is at least as seductive as it is melancholy. And even playful: This Pan can’t help but dance.Ravel’s “Daphnis et Chloé”Emmanuel Pahud; Pierre Boulez conducting Berlin Philharmonic (Deutsche Grammophon)◆ ◆ ◆John Corigliano, composerAfter the voice and the drum, is the flute our most ancient instrument? Blowing across a hollow tube creates a timbre that reaches deep within our souls. Our modern flute can do it all: rapid repeated notes, huge leaps, dynamics that range from a whisper to a scream. But even at its mildest, it’s that sound that makes the flute irresistible. The great Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu wrote his exquisite “Air” for solo flute in 1995. You hear every color of the instrument: intimate as a lullaby in its low register, ethereal as the wind on high.Toru Takemitsu’s “Air”Robert Aitken (Naxos)◆ ◆ ◆Seth Colter Walls, Times writerAnthony Braxton’s “Composition 23C” offers a memorable amalgam of musical languages. If at first the mutual appearance of trumpet and bass suggests a jazz combo, their melodic partnership with Mr. Braxton’s flute reveals clever misdirection. By traversing steady repetitions and gradually unfurling motifs in lock step, the group, with the added benefit of some improvised percussion, is playing a gloss on Minimalism. This was an aesthetic Mr. Braxton had early access to as a sometime member of the Philip Glass Ensemble. But the jaunty concision of his take on the style is its own singular, joyous experience.Anthony Braxton’s “Composition 23C”Anthony Braxton; Kenny Wheeler, trumpet; Dave Holland, bass; Jerome Cooper, percussion (Arista)◆ ◆ ◆Anthony Tommasini, Times chief classical music criticIn 1943, as World War II raged, Prokofiev took a break from his brash film score for “Ivan the Terrible” and wrote his Sonata for Flute and Piano in D. On the surface this piece may seem genial. But right in the first movement, after the flowing, lyrical main theme, the music goes through episodes of dark, wandering harmonies and unsettling turns. Soon after its premiere, the violinist David Oistrakh pressed Prokofiev to repurpose the piece for his instrument. But I much prefer how the bright, piercing tones of the flute in the original version stand out from — and even take on — the piano.Prokofiev’s Flute SonataEmmanuel Pahud; Stephen Kovacevich, piano (Warner Classics)◆ ◆ ◆Kathinka Pasveer, flutistI met Karlheinz Stockhausen at the conservatory in The Hague in November 1982, when he was giving concerts and master classes. During that month I performed several of his works. One week after he left, I got a phone call asking if I would like to come to Kürten, Germany. Stockhausen wanted to write flute music for me, and “Kathinkas Gesang,” the second act of the opera “Saturday From Light,” was born. After that, he dedicated many works for flute to me. One is “Thinki” (his nickname for me), a birthday present in 1997.Stockhausen’s “Thinki”Kathinka Pasveer (Stockhausen Foundation for Music)◆ ◆ ◆[embedded content]AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More