2017 Program Notes, Book 5 35. Friday, July 14, 2017 at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, July 15, 2017 at 7:30 p.m. Jay Pritzker Pavilion BEETHOVEN PIANO CONCERTO NO. 2 Grant Park Orchestra Simone Young Guest Conductor Andrew Tyson Piano Hindson Headbanger Beethoven. PIANO CONCERTO NO. 2 (1794-1795) Scored for: flute, two oboes, two bassoons, two.
![]() Franz Doppler(16 October 1821 — 27 July 1883)Alternative Names/Transliterations: Albert Franz Doppler, Ferenc Doppler, François Doppler, Albert Franciszek Doppler, Albrecht Franz Doppler
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Name in Other Languages: 法兰兹·杜普勒, 法蘭茲·杜普勒, フランツ・ドップラー, فرانتس دوپلر, Франц Допплер, Doppler Ferenc, Франц ДоплерAliases: 法蘭茲·達普勒, Albert Franz Doppler, アルベルト・フランツ・ドップラー, فرانتز دوپلر, Допплер Франц, Ferenc Doppler, Albert Ferenc Doppler ![]()
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Authorities - WorldCat, Wikipedia, VIAF: 66651550, LCCN: n80096733, ISNI: 0000 0000 8146 5328, GND: 116180064, SUDOC: 087887061, BNF: 138933680, MusicBrainz: 0c442d6b-fb3b-4428-ac80-3acdb27a7b92, NLA: 35277745, NDL: 01096323, NKC: xx0011283, BNE: XX1132676, IATH: w6dj5dg6Show works by type/instrument External links
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Miscellaneous informationCompositions (20)Compositions by: Doppler, Franz
The following 20 pages are in this category, out of 20 total.
Collaborations (1)Collaborations with: Doppler, Franz
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Collections (1)Collections by or with: Doppler, Franz
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As Arranger (6)Arrangements by: Doppler, Franz
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Flute Favourites
Best loved classical flute music
Flutes of one kind or another have been a part of humankind’s means of expression since the earliest days. We can imagine how hollow tubes of bones and wood might have started out being used to imitate birds or as aids for communicating while hunting. But as a new voice with notes moving in clearly defined steps it is not a huge leap to see that these first instruments would have been a significant part of an exploration of different kinds of musical scales: the basis for all organised sound throughout history.
As a melodic tool, the flute shares many aspects of other musical instruments, but one of its unique qualities is a vocal character which has been explored by composers through the ages. Looking at the selection of music in this programme, you can hear the aria-like way in which J.S. Bach uses the flute in his Siciliano, or indeed the Andantino from Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp, which is just like an amorous duet at the heart of some romantic operatic drama. Virtuoso qualities exploited by flautists also take their instrument beyond the range and abilities of the human voice, and 18th- and 19th-century audiences loved hearing familiar songs and operatic arias taken into stratospheric marvels of bravura display. Schubert’s Variations on‘Trockne Blumen’ is a relatively reserved example when put against later hits such as the Doppler brothers’ Rigoletto-fantaisie, but the motivations for such pieces are the same.
The voice of the flute has been the subject of legends for millennia, and there will be few who haven’t heard stories like that of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. The flute’s basic simplicity and innate sweetness of sound has a timeless quality which opens the instrument to a wide range of uses, from abstract instrumental music to music which deliberately plays on associations of prehistoric memory and nature. Composers have long exploited these multilayered resonances, and while Vivaldi’s use of the flute to conjure nightmare apparitions in La notte is arguably coincidental, there can be little doubt as to its uses in other contexts. More recent composers have often used the flute to hark back to nature or the mysteries of a distant and mythological past, and Debussy’s Syrinx and the beautiful flute solo of Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune both create the atmosphere of an idealised but long lost paradise. The sensual and mysterious nature of the flute’s sound can of course be heard everywhere, and the character of films can be defined by its presence—the Irish flute solo in the film Titanic being just one example.
The flute has gained in sophistication from its humble origins as a perforated tube. Specialists all over the world are kept busy repairing and maintaining the complex system of keys and levers which encrust today’s instruments. This elegantly designed jumble of rods and pads was developed to make the flute a truly chromatic instrument, capable of playing in all musical keys without having to change instruments or resort to inhuman contortions and combinations of fingerings and blowing angles just to obtain certain notes while in a particular key. While players thank the designer of today’s key system Theobald Boehm (1794–1881), flautists still recognise that all they are really doing is making a noise by blowing over a hollow tube just as their prehistoric ancestors did. The challenge is to turn this ancient activity into music with a fluency and panache which conceals the basic nature of the instrument and all of those years of mechanical study and perfecting of technique, something which Mozart appears to have found lacking in his wealthy flute-playing clients.
Classical players are obsessed with resonance and intonation, and flute makers have responded to their demands by creating beautifully cut lip-plates, elegantly elliptical-curved head-joints and mathematically designed proportions to produce scales with the perfection of Shakespearian poetry. The overtone-rich sound we seek these days in the West is by no means universal, and cultural and stylistic traditions vary from ethnic bamboo flutes for which the reproduction of the airy sound of the wind can be an essential element, to the directness and rhythmic charge of jazz or rock musicians. Part of the appeal of music making in our time is that we can research and look back at the strengths of the forerunners of our modern ‘power flutes’, and attempt to perform earlier music in the sound which would have been expected by composers in their day. If you listen to Bach’s Badinerie on this album you may be able to hear a difference in sound with most of the other recordings in this programme. Played on wooden flute, this is the kind of effect you can expect to hear more often in period performances which seek to recreate the ‘vibe’ intended by the composer, stripping away the accretions of performance practice as they have been applied to works in the many years since they first sounded.
Fashion is another element which has affected musical instruments over the years; and for some reason flutes in particular. Players can find themselves on a long search to find the perfect instrument, but while they will treasure their ideal flute once found, they will like anyone else be constantly tempted by trying out the newest materials and designs. Today we have almost come full circle, with brilliance of sound balanced by an appreciation of the warmth of tone colour in wooden flutes, in view of their reappearance amongst professionals in both orchestral and chamber music contexts. There is even the occasional oddity of a wooden head-joint on a silver flute. Experiments with exotic metals to create the ultimate flute sound reached their peak in 1935 when the William S. Haynes Company made a platinum flute played by Georges Barrère. Wooden flutes were still common at that time, but there was also a fashion for metal head-joints on wooden flute bodies. It was however the sparkling character of the performer which made gold flutes the ultimate instrument, as players aspired to the brilliance of technique and sound which made James Galway a household name in the 1970s.
We are fortunate to be able to look back on a wealth of musical history, and draw on this resource with equanimity. Not always so the musicians of the past, who were also guided by fashion as well as being its leaders. Listen to the difference between Johann Sebastian Bach’s music and that of his son Carl Philipp Emanuel, whose father’s music was seen as academic and unfashionable even in his own lifetime. Mozart had great respect for the elder Bach and studied his fugues, but would never have considered performing them in public. Styles of performing have become more homogenised these days, but you can hear distinct differences of ‘school’ amongst flautists from recordings made in the last century. Where the French tone was rich with an inner vibrato that gave life and projection to the tone, English players tended to favour a straighter line, with warmth of expression derived more from a sort of choirboy purity in the sound.
The flute is an instrument of opposites. It is simple and complex, and can possess clarity and mystery in equal measure and at the same time. It is a voice which speaks directly yet without words, which can sing of joy to one person and sadness to another even though they are listening to the same performance. It is essentially a gentle instrument. In his exercise manual De la sonorite, which is the flautist’s bible when it comes to studying the sound of the instrument, Marcel Moyse adds as an almost throwaway remark, ‘…true strength does not really lie in the character of the flute.’ Certainly in comparison to brass instruments, but also when placed next to other woodwind instruments such as the clarinet when in full cry, the flute lacks sheer volume of sound. The one version of the flute which can rise above an entire symphony orchestra and lead it as no other is the piccolo, but when there is a flute solo you will usually hear the orchestra quieten. There are occasions where the flute is deliberately pitched against clearly superior forces, and one renowned flautist of the 1950s, Gareth Morris of the Philharmonia Orchestra, used to tell of how he would sportingly try and outplay his friend the even more renowned horn player Dennis Brain during performances of Brahms’ SymphonyNo. 1, where the flute is asked to answer the call of the horn in the Finale.
It is not difficult to obtain a sound from the flute, and as a reasonably accessible instrument it is also relatively easy to learn to a certain level. Its intimate connection with the player and their inner ‘soul’ does make it the kind of instrument which is mercilessly revealing of the character and musicality of the performer. With this selection of some of the best music for the flute played by some of the leading soloists of our time, we are sure that their abundance of flute passion will be immediately apparent and will give lasting pleasure, perhaps encouraging you to delve deeper into the riches of repertoire just waiting to be discovered.
1 J.S. Bach: Orchestral Suite No. 2 in B minor, BWV 1067 – VII. Badinerie
J.S. Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 2BWV 1067 is thought to be his last orchestral work, and its final movement is the famous Badinerie. This is an irrepressibly up-beat little piece, which is quite a feat given its minor key. The title has its Classical equivalent in the scherzo, another word which translates as ‘joke’, and the Badinerie is a playful dance which would no doubt have resulted in some rosy cheeks after the exertions of the participants.
2 Mozart: Concerto for Flute and Harp in C major, K. 299 – II. Andantino
The marriage of flute and harp is one made in heaven, and Mozart’s genius for producing elegant and perfectly proportioned melodies allied to gorgeous harmonies makes this Andantino one of his most beautiful movements. The music can be heard as being filled with yearning poignancy, though it is hard to make claims that the bittersweet descending melodic gestures and some of the subtle angst in the more intense harmonic progressions anticipate the death of Mozart’s mother, which occurred just a few months after the work was written. This might have more to do with his ongoing romantic situation with the Weber family and his feelings for the young Aloysia, whom he had left behind when searching for work in Paris. The injustice of the apparent reluctance of his patron, the Duc de Guines to pay for the work is said to have contributed to Mozart’s famously stated disliking for the flute. It is also equally likely to have been the limited abilities of his wealthy clients as well as the limitations of the instrument itself which lead to the composer’s comments.
3 – 6 Schubert: Variations on ‘Trockne Blumen’ from Die schöne Müllerin, Op. 160, D. 802 – Theme, Variation 1, Variation 6, Variation 7
Schubert’s Variations on ‘TrockneBlumen’ from Die schone Mullerin was written early in 1824, when the composer’s health was already deteriorating from the disease which would cause his untimely death. It is Schubert’s only original composition for the flute, taking its theme from the 18th in his cycle of songs Die schoneMullerin (‘The Fair Maid of the Mill’), which tells a story of forlorn love as the miller’s apprentice sets out into the world, leaving his beloved to her new suitor.
The original song sees the lover musing on the now faded flowers that his beloved once gave him, but Schubert’s exploration of the virtuoso possibilities of the flute soon shake us out of moody introspection, transforming the theme into a defiantly cheerful E major key by the last of the Variations.
7 Debussy: Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune
Completed in 1894, the revolutionary orchestral piece Prelude a l’apres-midid’un faune (‘Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun’) was inspired by a poem by Mallarmé and was completed in 1894. Warmly sensuous in expression, Debussy’s score reflects the words of a Faun as, resting in a wooded glade during the mid-day heat, he is stirred by the sight of passing nymphs. The opening flute solo is one of the most famous in the entire orchestral repertoire; portraying the sound of the Faun’s reed-pipe, which seems to float towards us through the languid summer air from a distance. Debussy teases our ear with ambiguous tonality in this solo, which is harmonised later in the work but always remains something intangible. It is a melody suffused with the elusive world of an idealised nature, and a pagan realm which exists only in ancient stories and the imagination of the poet and the listener.
8 Mozart: Flute Quartet No. 1 in D major, K. 285 – I. Allegro
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s FluteQuartet No. 1 predates the Concerto,K. 299 by about a year, and was written in Mannheim not long after Mozart had left Salzburg to seek his fortunes on the wider European stage. Mozart befriended the flautist Johann Baptist Wendling, who in turn introduced him to a wealthy amateur flautist. This was Ferdinand Dejean, a surgeon with the Dutch East India Company, who offered Mozart 200 gulden for three concertos and some flute quartets. The autograph score of the Quartet, K. 285 is dated 25 December 1777, and the opening Allegro is filled with an optimistic spirit and quality of inspiration which eludes the composer somewhat in the other flute quartets. It was during this time that Mozart’s romance with Aloysia Weber was sparked. She was a young singer in Mannheim at the time, and when Mozart later left for Paris he was erroneously convinced that she shared his feelings of infatuation. Mozart was also to be disappointed by his client Dejean, who by February of the following year had only paid 96 gulden of the promised fee.
9 Vivaldi: Flute Concerto in G minor, Op. 10, No. 2, RV 439, ‘La notte’ – I. La notte: Largo – II. Fantasmi: Presto–Largo–Presto
Antonio Vivaldi, known in his native Venice as ‘the red priest’ due to the colour of his hair, was renowned as a violinist of phenomenal abilities, and an internationally famous composer in his own lifetime. As with his most famous set of concertos TheFour Seasons, some of Vivaldi’s other concertos carry descriptive titles, and that of the Flute Concerto in G minor is La notte or ‘The Night’. This subtitle is attached to the mysterious first movement, which serves as a slow and suspenseful introduction to a second movement with an even more alarming title: Fantasmi, or the imaginary figures which emerge dramatically into nightmares. The figurations for the flute suggest spiralling and turbulent beings with unruly and impish natures, though there is a calm central section which brings relief from their attentions, and our fevered brow is further soothed by the sighing release of a final major chord.
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10 Boccherini: Flute Quintet in D major, Op. 17, No. 1, G. 419 – I. Allegro assai
Comparable in style with Joseph Haydn and having a considerable facility as a composer, Luigi Boccherini was renowned as a virtuoso cellist. His Op. 17 is an attractive set of six compact quintets for flute and string quartet, dated 1773 and described as opera piccolo or ‘little work’. The Quintet No. 1in D major opens with a sense of busy urgency with its repeated notes, but the melodic theme with which the flute enters after the introduction has the kind of easy charm which makes it apparent why Boccherini’s music was and still is so popular. This kind of music is as rewarding to play as it is for entertainment, and the skill of the composer and performer is a deception, providing easy sounds which reward the careful listener with masses of detail and expressive content.
11 Reinecke: Flute Concerto in D major, Op. 283 – I. Allegro molto moderato
Carl Reinecke was a pianist, conductor and educator as well as a composer, inhabiting the rich creative worlds of Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms and touring widely through Europe. His Flute Concertoin D major came at the end of his long and productive career, and seems a remarkable anachronism for 1908, maintaining the relatively transparent early Romantic style of a long-gone era at the same time as composers such as Mahler and Rachmaninov were flourishing, and the modern age of Debussy, Bartók and Stravinsky was taking hold. Reinecke never embraced the newness of musical language developed by Wagner and Liszt, but this takes nothing away from the qualities of his work, and the FluteConcerto is a gift for performers. Warmly orchestrated but with limited forces, the soloist has space to soar over the accompaniment with themes and melodic shapes which are an ideal vehicle for both expressive sonority and virtuoso display.
12 C.P.E. Bach: Flute Concerto in A minor, Wq. 166, H. 431 – III. Allegro assai
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was the second son of Johann Sebastian Bach, and like his father was regarded as the leading keyboard player of his day. The Concerto in A minor is a version of a harpsichord concerto of 1750, seemingly arranged for flute in the same year, the year of J.S. Bach’s death. C.P. E. Bach was also a prolific composer, and his work became associated with the Empfindsamer Stil or ‘Sensitive Style’ which in his work is typified through the use of dramatic devices, an emphasis on melody and a relatively sparing use of the old fashioned contrapuntal techniques used by Johann Sebastian. This reflection of ‘true and natural feelings’ is expressed in the last movement of the Concerto in A minor in angular rhythms and rhetorical melodic gestures in the sometimes brutally demanding solo part. These are aspects of this music that might have been anything but comforting to some audience members of the time, but represent the seeds of a line which can be traced to the explosive impact of Romanticism a mere 60 years or so later.
13 J.S. Bach: Flute Sonata in E flat major, BWV 1031 – II. Siciliano
While the history of Johann Sebastian Bach’s flute sonatas is not entirely clear and there is doubt as to the authenticity of some, they have remained a central part of the repertoire of most flautists. The Siciliano is one of the simplest and most beautiful movements of Bach’s secular instrumental works. It follows typical Baroque models of the form, being a slow dance in a minor key with gently lilting rhythms which suggest pastoral moods. In this case, the composer’s genius lifts this standard stylistic formula into something which sticks in the memory. This is a disarmingly straightforward melody which moves with elegant ease over subtle tensions and releases in the harmonies of the gently rippling accompaniment, creating a moment of timeless calm in the midst of our turbulent existence.
14 Kuhlau: Grand Trio in G major, Op. 119 – I. Allegro moderato
While he also wrote operas and composed for the theatre, the name Friedrich Kuhlau is one of huge importance in the flute world. He wrote numerous works for flute and piano, though what we know today is only the work that was published: much of his unpublished work was reduced to ashes when his house was destroyed by fire in 1831. Kuhlau’s Grand Trio in G major for two flutes and piano would seem to have had a lucky escape, being published in London in the same year as that disastrous fire. It is a work which has affinities with the models of Mozart and Beethoven, as well as with the work of his exact contemporary Carl Maria von Weber. The Allegro moderato opening movement is in sonata form, with its principal theme introduced by the piano. The main joy of the piece is in the interplay between the two flutes, who sometimes chase around in thirds and sixths like a single instrument, but more often throw the generously hearty themes and melodies between each other like a big beach ball.
15 Doppler, F. & K.: Rigoletto-fantaisie, Op. 38
The Doppler brothers Franz and Karl were given a strong musical foundation by their father, who was a composer and oboist with the Warsaw Opera. Franz was principal flute in the German theatre in Pest by 1838, and not long after took a similar position at the Hungarian National Theatre. It was at this time that he started making some impact as a composer, writing several operas and contributing to the birth of national Hungarian music. Karl Doppler followed his brother’s example, holding various positions as principal flute and composing for the theatre.
Transcriptions of popular melodies from operas were highly fashionable in the mid-19th century, and the Doppler brother’s work reflects the tastes of their time. The Rigoletto-fantaisie for two flutes was written by Karl and Franz together, and as a prime example of its genre the piece held an important place in their concert repertoire in its original version with piano accompaniment. While maintaining the traditions of their predecessors, the Dopplers can be seen as the precursors of the modern flute, and as an inspiration of the virtuoso French school whose legacy is still very much in evidence today.
Dominy Clements © Naxos Rights (Europe) Ltd ![]() Comments are closed.
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