FLUTE PERSPECTIVES VOLUME 4
Derek Jones, Jerry Wong, Joshua Hyde
Move Records MD 3476
Following his own particular path, flautist Derek Jones presents a fourth collection of music written for his instrument by (generally, in this instance) living local composers. His associate pianist is a carry-over from the preceding album, Jerry Wong, and the works on this particular CD cover a wide time-span. The oldest work is venerable Sydney composer Anne Boyd's Bali moods No. 1 of 1987; Boyd has also featured on the first and second in Jones' Flute Perspectives discs. She is closely followed in time by Keith Humble's five-movement Sonata for flute and piano of 1991, written four years before this notable writer's death. Alan Holley's River Song and Rosella date from 1997 and 1999 respectively. Then we jump to Harry Sdraulig's Sonata for flute and piano of 2014, before coming to last year's Firefly's Dream by Linda Verrier (a writer who also featured on the previous Flute Perspectives CD) and Folding outward into traces by Joshua Hyde who features on the CD itself, escorting Jones electronically through his score.
Boyd is of the school that sees this country's musical creativity as indebted to/part of Asia. I don't know if this creed has maintained its former strong influence; there's little sign of it in the current crop of younger composers, but Boyd has maintained the faith which also formed part of the inspiration for her teacher, Peter Sculthorpe. Bali rounds No. 1 is part of a triptych of flute+piano pieces that take their impetus from Indonesian sounds and modes. In form, it's like a rondo with a gamelan-type scene-setting from the piano before the flute enters to toy with the piece's opening pattern. This atmospheric segment recurs after two cadenzas for flute, one of them with some piano gong-chords, the whole coming to a fade-out conclusion.
As with several of Boyd's works, this Indonesian-Balinese character is deftly accomplished in a score with a quiet attractiveness, its peaceful progress brought to stasis at the two cadenzas which sound free-form as far as rhythm is concerned. Worlds away in every respect is Humble's sonata which is more attuned to the world of Boulez's Sonatine pour flute et piano of 1946 in its bursts of action from both performers. You might expect suggestions of twelve-tone and you'd be right, but the disposition of the series is free-form, as far as I can make out - at least in the opening movement..
The abrupt fits and starts in an improbable rhythmic scheme dissipate near the movement's end, which is dead slow and sombre. Much the same process occurs in the brief second movement which opens with splashes of sound that seem more formally organized than in the preceding pages. But there is a similar reduction in action to a quiet, brooding conclusion. With the third movement, you first encounter a similar landscape to those of its predecessors, if the process appears to be more prone to an even keener (or more practicable) synchronicity. The players' mutual mobility comes to a halt for a long flute solo which again moves us into darker-hued territory with few signs of freneticism. A near-funereal coda from Wong concludes this pivotal segment of the work.
Humble's brief fourth movement sees an ongoing juxtaposition of the leap-frogging calisthenics of post-Webern chamber music and a placid oasis or two of firm pulse and support rather than the bleep-and-commentary nature of the mise-en-scene in the score's separate parts so far. Yet again, the final stages of these pages are more restrained, near-formal in some scale-like steps from Jones. And the not-quite-as-brief Final follows the same format with a pointillistic opening that gradually gives way to murmurs from both instruments. Not to say that all five movements are replicas of each other but the shape of each one has much in common with its fellows.
Still, this sonata shows the composer in a sharp-edged light with a more placid emotional aspect than in the handful of his works that I've encountered over the last near-60 years. But it speaks a European language in its active moments, as you'd expect from a writer who spent a significant amount of time and enjoyed success in France. Jolley's two solo flute pieces are of a different heritage, one that sounds local in its suggestions of Australian Bucolic, as in River song which sets up its central motifs and more or less elaborates on them without straying too far from the originals. It's a French-indebted work also, but more Debussy than Dutilleux and making no claims to rhythmic spasms or aggressive sound-splays.
The second of Jolley's solos, Rosella, is just as concentrated in its material disposition with some more florid outbursts and its concentration is more noticeable as it's less than half the length of River song. You won't heard rosella sound transcriptions but a series of images that suggest the bird's mercurial change of life-pattern, if delineated in a tautly stretched aural canvas. Both pieces show a solid workmanship in construction, as well as the composer's talent at suggesting aspects of the bush and its denizens. Jones gives eloquent and sympathetic readings of these scenic pieces, engaging them both with a calm authority.
The sonata by Sdraulig is an early work, if his online catalogue is any indication as it comes from his second year of compositional operations. It's in four movements - Prelude, Badinerie, Romanza, Finale - and the first two are brief while the last is the longest and something of a mixed bag. Nevertheless, the work has a clear shape and direct mode of address even while the composer explores his possibilities. For instance, the Prelude sets up a bitonal piano pattern of soft semiquavers in 5/8 before the flute enters with high sustained notes that acquire rapid-fire ornamentation. But despite a central complexity before reverting to the opening Moderato e molto misterioso, these pages have a firm character and ease of utterance.
The only badinerie I know is the final movement from Bach's Orchestral Suite in B minor with its grasshopper flute line. Sdraulig applies a light fragility to his at the start with a repeated note in 6/8 (I think) to begin, skirmishing with the piano before setting out on a rapid-fire journey that offers stronger affirmations of the opening pattering and some assertive striding around for both players. Not that the performance here is forced but there are a few passages that come across as laboured and I can't determine whether it comes from the performers' determination or some awkwardness in Sdraulig's writing. But the movement's bookend pages are feather-light and deft.
Sdraulig's Romanza presents as a slow waltz, one that meanders harmonically through the piano's initial statement, immediately mirrored by the piano. Gradually, the intensity deepens and the movement rises to an emphatic climactic point before receding and returning to its origins in a kind of resigned leave-taking that eventually comes to a settlement. You could view it as a song, a lyric of both casualness and intensity. But the last movement is an assemblage where you can pick out some recurring features but the dynamic and emotional landscape is highly varied: fom a rapid-fire opening that recalls the Badinerie to long melodic arcs for the flute (including one exposed solo) that recall the Romanza. I think any listener can detect six or seven sections that are juxtaposed but, despite this variety, the effect is not really successful. Jones and Wong sound stodgy in some of the quick-fire passages and a lack of light touches, of sparkiness prove disappointing.
A more successful blending can be found in Linda Verrier's piece where the atmosphere is pervasively melancholic. Where, in the summers of her youth, the composer saw fireflies galore, returning years later she finds only one. In any case, she celebrates the insect with a mobile line for alto flute, realized through plenty of trills and repeated notes to suggest a visible presence. At the same time, she seems to be lamenting its solitariness in strophes that come close to an elegy. To her credit, Verrier contrives to keep these two strands in balance in a score that taps into this instrument's capacity for darker, chalumeau-type colours.
Hyde's construct is the longest track on this CD, even if to my ears it splays out a limited amount of substance, some of which is extended well beyond its power to engage. Jones plays multiphonic chords or intervals while Hyde treats the given material electronically. For the first half of the work, the emphasis is on amplifying or subduing different layers of the flute/electronic construct. Sound strata come and go as lights do in an aurora. Later, additional sounds enter the mix; one sounds like a chainsaw but might only be an agglomeration of pitches; towards the end, we are hit with what sound like motorcycle exhaust noises.
Not that this welding of live and electronics is that novel a concept or practice. But there's something endearing in Hyde's exercise where you can hear the effort involved in his and Jones' folding outward, taking notes and welding them into an unusual composite. Well, these days there's not much that's unusual but this work pursues its traces with determination and invention. In its concluding phases, Jones is subsumed into the texture, his original sounds mere trace elements in the sound environment. It's a fine way to bring us up-to-date, concluding this latest exploration in Jones' corner of Australian music.
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