I’m not quite sure about the title. Cruder minds than mine
- if such a thing should be thought possible to exist - might
find it tempting. I of course will carry on regardless, wind
or no wind.
The selection is a typical one for this company; broadly little
known contemporary music leavened by the occasional classic.
Schröder’s Music for flue and bassoon was published
in 1978, the year of his death. It’s written in a loose-limbed,
rather avuncular neo-classical style, rising to the austerity
of the slow fourth movement and a vital, engaging finale. Pierre
Gabaye’s Sonatine by contrast has a rather insouciant Milhaud-like
quality. There’s an especially nice, deadpan March in the
opening movement and a rhapsodic song at the work’s centre.
The finale picks up the dance theme and transforms things into
a perky and rhythmically chattery and inherently charming conclusion.
Willson Osborne’s Rhapsody for bassoon is heard here in
its 1958 revision. It’s influenced by Hindemith, and its
lyrical freedom is subject to a strong organisational control.
I must say I was looking forward to Jan Bach’s
Music
for a Low-Budget Epic and this pesky opus, which owes its
genesis to that director of mad genius Ed Wood, is a genuine
homage. That said I think the title is better than the music,
despite the pesky trills, the larky air - even with its deliberately
over loquacious piccolo. I did like the chariot race
a deux that
ended it though.
Back in 1938 Eugene Bozza dedicated his Sonatine to Ibert. It’s
an agile, engaging work with a suave Andantino and a freewheeling
finale. It’s zesty, none too deep, and sounds highly rewarding
to play. The other works are better known. The Villa-Lobos is
difficult to balance but players and engineers have ensured that
there is no overbalancing or covering. Lozano and Muller play
the Fantasia with requisite awareness of its lugubrious qualities.
Then we have Piazzolla’s
Etudes Tanguistiques for
solo flute, of which we hear numbers 3 and 4. They are less flimsy
than I usually encounter from the pen of the fecund Piazzolla.
As with Villa-Lobos due obeisance is shown to Bach - though you’d
be hard pressed indeed to name the composer from these strictly
classical studies.
An interesting recital then, very well played and recorded -
though I found longueurs, which is perhaps not unexpected in
a programme for this combination - or indeed solo.
Jonathan Woolf
Danilo Lozano (flute) 
