Cinq Pièces en Trio for Oboe, Clarinet and Bassoon (5 pieces in Trio, Arrange for Flute, Clarinet, and Bassoon)
Cinq Pièces en Trio for Oboe, Clarinet and Bassoon was written in 1935 when Ibert was travelling around Europe conducting performances of his own works. The five pieces that make up this work demonstrate the charm and wit that can be found in much of Ibert’s music. The miniatures contrast each other with alternating fast and slow tempi and each has an inviting tune that utilises all of the three instruments’ ranges.
Louis Ganne: Andante et Scherzo for flute and piano
During his lifetime Louis Ganne (1862-1923) was regarded as one of the leading composers of lighter music in France. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, where Massenet taught him composition and César Franck taught him the organ. He had scarcely left the Conservatoire when he started to make a name for himself as the composer of marches, waltzes and mazurkas. For many years he was in charge of music at the Monte Carlo Casino, where he directed a very popular concert series, Les Concerts de Louis Ganne. He also wrote a number of operettas and ballets, but nowadays he is remembered most for a single piece, Marche lorraine (1892, [12]), using an old folk-song from the district. During the Second World War, Marche lorraine assumed a special significance as a battle song for the Free French and their allies.
EDGARD VARÈSE - Density 21.5 for flute solo
This work was originally written in 1936, but edited continuously by the composer until 1951, when the version we hear today was published. It is customarily thought that Georges Barrere requested this piece to be written for the inauguration of his platinum flute, but this is not strictly true for tow reasons. The official debut of the instrument was in 1935 (a year prior to Density 21.5) at a Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra concert. There’s another problem—the flute wasn’t even the advertised “platinum flute”. It wasn’t solid platinum, but an alloy with 10% iridium. One of his contemporaries did have a solid platinum flute at the same time. Oddly enough, it seems that Varese knew something was amiss in this area. The title of this piece is assumed to be the density of Platinum, but the actual density of platinum is 21.45. The density of platinum-iridium is 21.5, what Barrere’s flute was actually made out of.
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While Georges Barrere performed the first edition of Density 21.5, Ruth Freeman premiered the next revised edition in 1946, which had doubled the length and added the key slap percussive sounds. Alas, this is still not the version we play today.
The published version we perform today was published in 1951, the only version still in print today. When you complete an assignment and turn it in, do you rework that assignment even after you have a grade? Edgard Varese did just that, multiple times, until only the first 10 bars were the only part left virtually untouched.
This piece is tonally fixed around a minor 3rd interval until later in the piece when two different whole tone scales are used to replace tonality. The original form of this piece was a bipartite form, but after the many alterations, it only vaguely resembles a tripartite form.
Jacques Ibert: Concerto for Flute and Orchestra
The Flute Concerto has remained one of the most popular works for the instrument, regardless of the composerʼs overall canonical status. Ibert began work on the piece in 1932 after Paris Conservatoire professor and accomplished flutist Marcel Moyse asked him to write a piece for the instrument, which he premiered 1934 to widespread acclaim. Indeed, the piece was so popular and technically challenging that the Paris Conservatoire began that year to use the final movement as a test piece for student auditions.
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The first Allegro movement—restless, incessant, and chromatic—opens with a storm of sixteenth notes answered by a lyrical and slightly foreboding second theme. The sixteenths return again with a vengeance as they dart breathlessly from the soloist to various sections of the orchestra. The second movement, a dreamy Andante accompanied by gentle strings, is reminiscent of one of Ibertʼs other enduring works, the orchestral suite Escales that was inspired by the composerʼs travels around Italy. The concertoʼs Finale (Allegro scherzando) provides clear evidence that Ibert was not simply a musically conservative, steadfastly French composer. The complex rhythmic fabric of the movement, alternating between sections of four and three beats, is obviously influenced by American jazz, and is likewise evocative of some of Ibertʼs film scores based on popular music. The final movement makes a range of technical demands of the soloist, from swift leaps to even swifter scale passages and tongue-twisting melodic material, which are combined in the final cadenza and punctuated by the movementʼs energetic orchestral conclusion.