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It is my great pleasure to introduce Eight Visions to you. The culmination of a commissioning project on which I embarked in 2005, this anthology offers students and teachers a diverse and engaging group of works that ensures a meaningful encounter with the music of our time.
Too many music students miss out on the rewards of studying and performing music by living composers. For flutists and other instrumentalists, the vast majority of available repertoire is a product of previous centuries and distant creators. Furthermore, the few contemporary pieces to which the student is exposed often pose sudden, unfamiliar challenges that discourage interest before it can begin to grow.
To allow young flute players to become true twenty-first-century musicians, with the skills and confidence to master a diversity of repertoire, those of us in teaching positions need to ensure that the study and performance of contemporary music is an integral part of our students’ training. And from the perspective of our musical culture, it is imperative that the techniques and conventions of contemporary music become a central part of young musicians’ vocabularies so that the inheritance of the full range of new music is securely handed down to succeeding generations.
The eight works in this collection – seven for flute and piano, and one for alto flute with pre-recorded sounds – represent not only important new additions to the repertoire, but also serve as a point of departure for teaching tools on instrumental technique and compositional thinking. Collectively, they offer students a unique opportunity to build a progressively deepening relationship with the music of eight living composers. In addition, three of the composers (Kenji Bunch, Chen Yi, and David Sanford) created alternate versions for two flutes, also available from Presser.
As a lifelong advocate for contemporary music, I have been fortunate to collaborate with many composers over the course of my career, most notably in my position as the founder and artistic director of the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, which has commissioned numerous works since our first season in 1983. In my roles both as a performing flutist and a teacher, however, I have long been frustrated for by the small number of new works written for solo flute and piano by leading composers. Several years ago, while sitting on the annual flute juries as a faculty member at Manhattan School of Music, I was struck anew by the lack of variety in the repertoire being performed – it seemed as though everyone was playing the same few pieces!
The time was clearly ripe for an infusion of imaginative new works into the repertoire, especially following the discontinuation in 2002 of the Paris Conservatoire’s famed commissioning program for its annual flute exams. Originated in 1824, this program, which I came to know as a student at the Conservatoire, invited leading French composers to write short pieces to be played by instrumental students at their end-of-year exams. To fulfill their function in assessing students’ progress, these pieces were to include a slow section for students to demonstrate their tone quality and a fast section in which they could display their technique. Among the distinguished works that came into being through this program are Taffanel’s Andante pastoral and scherzantino, Gaubert’s Nocturne et allegro scherzando, Chaminade’s Concertino, Fauré’s Fantaisie, Enesco’s Cantabile and Presto, Dutilleux’s Sonatine, and Messiaen’s Le merle noir. Having had the good fortune to be a part of this historic tradition, I hope this anthology will provide a similarly enriching experience for succeeding generations of flute students.
As mentioned above, the process leading to this publication began in 2005, when I approached Meet the Composer with my idea. Together, we crafted an approach to the project that aligned perfectly with MTC’s initiative to encourage individual patrons to become actively involved in the commissioning of new music. MTC played a key role in coordinating the project as it went forward. The resulting compositions were completed by early 2007. I remain deeply grateful to individual commissioners Annaliese Soros, Ernest Levenstein, Mary Rodgers and Henry Guettel, Frederick Peters, and Gilbert Kaplan for their generous donations, and to the Bay and Paul Foundations for their grant in support of the project.
On March 29, 2007, I premiered all eight works at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, and subsequently recorded them for a CD, available separately on the Naxos label. Underscoring the collaborative nature of the commissioning process, some of the composers made modifications to their scores after hearing their works in performance (although those changes are not heard in the recording).
Reflecting the splendid diversity of classical music in the 21st century, the four women and four men chosen for the project ranged from emerging young talents to established masters, encompassing a wide range of backgrounds, nationalities, stylistic concerns, and aesthetic priorities. Their contributions to this collection illustrate distinct personalities while offering a full range of technical and interpretive challenges to the performer.
In Ned Rorem’s Four Prayers, my greatest challenge was to let the melody soar and make an effective transition to a more percussive, marcato feel without diminishing the contemplative mood of the piece as a whole. In Tania León’s colorful Alma, it was critical to know exactly what the piano was doing at all times, especially during passages where the flute is in free notation and the piano in standard notation. (The full score for these passages is included in the flute part as a necessary point of reference.) The principal challenge in Eve Beglarian’s I Will Not Be Sad in This World was to allow the melody to sound free and song-like while playing over a very measured, predetermined audio track. Rhythmic coordination was again a principal issue in David Sanford’s exuberant Klatka Still, with its interplay of complex rhythms and groupings between the flute and piano.
My principal concerns in Paul Moravec’s beautifully lyrical Nancye’s Song were producing a lush sound and trying to manipulate the flute’s sound so that it melded with, rather than dominated, the harmonic structure. At the other end of the spectrum, I tried to take myself out of the zone of normal Western flute playing in Chen Yi’s Three Bagatelles from China West, experimenting with different tone colors and using different vibrato speeds to achieve a more authentic sound. At the premiere, I played this on my wooden flute, a modern instrument with a more mellow sound and less well-defined articulation than my regular gold flute. Similarly, in Melissa Hui’s Trace, I concentrated on sound to balance the work’s sparse texture and dynamics and to create the effect of suspended space suggested by the composer. An added challenge in this evocative work is its extensive use of harmonics. Kenji Bunch’s Velocity, which I used effectively both as a closing piece in recital and as the opener on my CD, was eminently worth the investment in practice time needed to master its virtuosic finger work and demands on the flutist’s energy reserves.
Originally envisioned as completely independent pieces, I imagined these works would be used separately to invigorate recital programs (and, of course, jury selections!). However, after receiving all the scores and getting to know each work individually, their eight distinct personalities seemed to form a natural grouping and took on an added dimension when performed together. It is perhaps worth mentioning that the ordering of pieces on the recording differs from the order in which I presented them in recital. This publication follows the order of the CD. I hope that other flutists will also consider presenting them as a group and will bring their own creativity and personality to the process of choosing an order that works best for them. Speaking from personal experience, I can guarantee that they will emerge as a stronger and more flexible performer as a result.
It was a great privilege, and a tremendously invigorating experience for me as a musician, to have played a part in bringing these works to life. Among the individuals who helped me bring this project to fruition, I especially want to thank Daniel Dorff, Vice President of Publishing for Theodore Presser Company (and an accomplished composer himself), for all his efforts and enthusiasm for this project, and Ed Harsh, President of Meet the Composer (also a composer), for his encouragement and wise counsel. My thanks, too, to Viki Roth (Special Projects coordinator at MTC) and Heather Hitchens (former MTC President and now Executive Director of the New York State Council on the Arts) for their important help and advice, and to David Bury for his early encouragement. This list could not be complete without thanking my husband, Ken Davidson, for his love and support.
I hope the works in this collection will bring much pleasure and fulfillment to performers and audiences alike as they assume their well-deserved place in the 21st-century flute repertoire.
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