This is an extremely
interesting overview of music for solo
flute. Its range takes in some of the
most famous works in the repertoire
to several which many a flautist will
not have heard – let alone tried to
perform.
These are well recorded
performances, placed at a suitable distance
in a not-too resonant acoustic. Laurel
Zucker is a powerful and persuasive
player, and while my flautist/composer’s
ear will always be picking out niggling
details the casual listener will almost
certainly be untroubled by such interpretive
or technical points. To those who love
the sound of the flute in its purest
solo setting, and who are interested
in exploring new repertoire, I recommend
they buy this set and read no further.
For students who will
follow the scores and either nod sagely
or shake their heads sadly in agreement
or dismissal of my personal comments,
by all means take note or not of the
following. Like the mean man on the
audition committee I have only picked
out a few works; otherwise we shall
be here all day, but you can take the
few as being representative of the many,
if you see what I mean.
The first disc begins
with Ibert’s Pièce, which
history tells us he dashed down at a
party as a challenge, with Marcel Moyse
performing the premiere within the hour.
Zucker’s performance is nicely turned,
but a little mannered for my taste.
She tends to lean a little too heavily
on the first note of the falling major
third motive, is free and easy with
the dynamics, and pushes or pulls the
rhythm unnecessarily here and there
– lingering a little too long over notes
and breaking up the forward momentum,
or rushing certain corners. Like Debussy’s
Syrinx, everything is there in
the score, and if you play what is written
it will work the best. That notorious
chromatic scale in thirds is a bit of
a mess as well. It gives us mere mortals
reassurance to hear human failings on
record, and I admit I can only manage
it 50% of the time – which fluffs would
hopefully be forgiven in a live concert.
Such things will return to haunt you
however, if they aren’t as good or as
perfect on a recording. Eleonore Pameijer
recorded it better (Brilliant Classics),
and the next time I see her, I’ll ask
how many takes it took.
Associated Board students
will be interested in hearing an interpretation
of Hindemith’s Acht Stücke.
Laurel Zucker is persuasive as always,
but I have a feeling the composer would
have one or two remarks to make. Take
the opening. How would you think the
score was marked: f, ff?
No, it’s only mf and we have
some way to go yet! In bar 10 of the
second movement there is a sudden leap
forward in tempo which is a bit disconcerting,
and either the sixteenths are too quick
or the eights too long in the last bar,
which is only marked ruhig. In
III I would prefer the entire dynamic
down a notch. It is in proportion,
but going beyond the markings changes
the character of the piece. If you are
already f at the end of bar 9,
then the only way to go is ff at
the end of 10, and that ain’t what’s
written. It may be an editing fault,
but there’s a missing E in bar 23 of
V, and I’d want to do that whole passage
again, in fact, if it was me. What is
going on with the last two notes of
bar 36? The decrescendo from ff surely
runs through to the f at the
beginning of the last line – the two
emphasis marks are surely not there
so that those notes rear up like a pair
of rubber Mickey Mouse ears. VI, marked
Lied, leicht bewegt again starts
at high volume, and a gentle stroll
through the park becomes stressful and
fraught. Sehr schnell in bar
3 of VII only really kicks in by the
next stave, and so the fast-slow contrast
is compromised. The little Mahlerian
‘ländler’ moment in bars 6-9 is
made such a meal of that the dance feeling
is entirely lost, and there’s another
note missing in the next stave. I could
bore on about several other little details,
but again, listening ‘blind’ all the
grandmothers will be mightily impressed.
Almost every serious student will however
come across these pieces sooner or later,
and should be warned that they might
come a cropper if they take Zucker’s
lead too literally.
Turning to the second
disc, it’s nice that Zucker includes
Carl Nielsen’s rarely played miniature,
The Children are Playing. Marked
‘Allegretto’, Zucker unfortunately goes
at it hammer and tongs as regards tempo
so that the children are left looking
on in confusion as the big grown-up
takes over their game. It’s that Jeremy
Hardy line: ‘finger painting? Never
mind that, I’ve got a fax machine!’
Taken at a milder tempo, the ‘poco
vivo’ in bar 16 need not have the
same tempo as the ‘a tempo’ in
bar 19. That little section is like
a child having more than one attempt
at something, not competition day at
the Academy. The ‘a tempo’ at
bar 30 is a rushed joke, and I think
Zucker has lost patience by now – she
certainly makes no effort to play the
optional repeat. Nielsen came from a
gently provincial, country background,
and his idea of children playing has
to have been different to this.
Edgard Varèse’s
Density 21.5 was famously named
for the inauguration of Georges Barrère’s
platinum flute, 21.5 being the density
of platinum. Zucker’s playing here is
powerful, dark and edgy – you could
imagine her flute being made of platinum
as well, which I’m sure is the effect
most flautists attempt with this piece.
My only minor beef here is the lack
of any real ‘p’. Take the ‘p
subito’ at the end of bar 7 as an
example. The soft lows more often than
not get the full growl here as well
as the hard highs, but surely the nature
of the piece is to illustrate extreme
breadth of dynamic range, as well as
the raw power of the new material.
To conclude, this double
CD is an ambitious and in general well-played
sample of a wide variety of solo flute
music. It will be an education for many
to find that Takemitsu and even Fukushima
don’t sound that difficult and modern
after all, and there is a good deal
of repertoire here I defy anyone to
find anywhere else - for that I salute
this issue. Laurel Zucker has apparently
chosen not to go for the alto, bass-flute
or piccolo repertoire to vary the timbre,
but there is enough variety in the programming
to maintain interest, and I won’t start
making lists of pieces which might have
been included. Only the Kuhlau Divertissement
sit a little strangely with the
rest, like a bunch of studies thrown
in to show the player can ‘do’ that
kind of romantic showpiece as well.
These could easily have been left out,
and the rest might just have been squeezed
onto one CD.
Dominy Clements
Laurel ZUCKER - solo flute
