Laurel Ann Maurer has
been assiduous in commissioning new
works for the repertoire and all but
one of the five on this disc receive
their premiere recordings here. The
senior composer is Kupferman whose The
Hallelujah Tree gives its title
to the disc. It was written for Maurer
in 2002 and is based on music he wrote
for a 1962 film. It was commissioned
just in time because Kupferman, a great
loss to America’ s musical landscape,
died in 2003. There are five compact
movements and Kupferman asks for flute,
doubling alto flute and piccolo, harp
and strings. Moods range from ultra
romanticism to scurrying virtuosity,
warm harp delicacy, and in the central
movement a sense of vernal delight.
There are some pawky-perky rhythms in
the brief Allegretto.
Perna’s Three Conversations
dates from1980 and is in three concise
movements. The first exploits some "practice
room" sonorities between the two
flautists taking both instruments up
very high. More congenial perhaps is
the second, marked slow…faster…slower
and.... with a certain remorseless
directness. Of the three it was the
finale that most impressed me with its
increasing warmth and sense of invention.
His Deux Berceuses were written for
Jerome Moross and for Debussy and it’s
the noble gravity of the former that
says in the mind most.
Jeff Manookian has
written an overlong Sonata for piccolo
and piano, which at twenty-four or so
minutes needs pruning. It’s strongly
written however, especially for piano
and in its first movement exploits the
upper register of the piccolo – essentially
dreamy and quiet for the piccolo though
that’s twice shattered by brief piano
chordal assertions. He central movement
has a certain emotive toughness and
the cadenza that launches the finale
has a hint of Eastern/Jewish music before
some gruff passagework. This however
is deceptive and we get instead some
jagged, almost cinematic motifs (reminded
me of terse TV Cop music actually) laced
with plenty of feroce before
a quiet end.
The only piece not
receiving a premiere recording is Miguel
Chuaqui’s Ancient Wing for solo
flute of 1993 but revised five years
later. It’s a brief quasi-descriptive
piece about Archaeopteryx, the Ancient
Wing of the title, and the prehistoric
"missing link" between the
lizard and the bird. Deft indeed is
the summoning up of its flapping wings!
This is an adventurous
and wide-ranging survey of works that
owe their genesis to the very able soloist
and are played by her with great finesse.
I greatly enjoyed much of the Kupferman,
the Chuaqui, one of the Perna Berceuse
and the finale of the Manookian. Not
a bad return for a contemporary flute
and piccolo album. Terse notes though.
Jonathan Woolf
Laurel Ann Maurer (flute, piccolo and alto flute)
