Category: What I’m listening to….

In a blast-from-the-past, I’m listening again to Galway playing Joaquin Rodrigo as I’m playing Rodrigo’s Canario, the last movement of Fantasia para un Gentilhombre, in a little concert in the school I teach at on Sydney’s lower North Shore.

I haven’t played this since I was 12 so it’s really a walk down memory lane for me.

Recorded in 1979, this recording has got Galway at the absolute top of his game, playing the Fantasia and also the fiendish Concerto Pastorale, written for Galway by Rodrigo himself.

I listen to this and it’s just quintessential Galway – the relentlessly powerful tone (even in piano!), impeccable technique. Straightforward, but impeccable, phrasing. He’s the flute player everyone has to have an opinion about – the Heifetz of the flute, the most influential player of the 20th century. And you hear it all in this recording.

I first heard Michael Martin Kofler back in 1994 or so at a flute convention in Frankfurt am Main. He had already held his job as Principal Flute with the Munich Philharmonic for some years and his performance (of Rodrigo’s Flute Concerto, no less) was amazing. Just brutally, relentlessly powerful but also gorgeous playing.

And so he is in Jeux à Deux: Recital for Flute and Harp. Lots of seamless, effortless beauty. An impeccable golden tone somewhat in the manner of James Galway. A luminous tone in Ibert’s Pièce in particular but also lots of delicate playing in his Bach interpretations.

I often forget the level of refinement but also intensity players like Kofler can show. The quality and intensity of his playing is something I need to remind myself of in my day-to-day playing and teaching.

This is a recording by the great Swiss flutist, Emmanuel Pahud and our own Australian Chamber Orchestra, led by Richard Tognetti, of the Six Concertos Op. 10 by Antonio Vivaldi. The concertos themselves are pillars of the flute repertoire, even though they were originally composed for recorder.

What can I say about this? It’s hands-down the best, most charismatic and consistently musically-compelling recording of these concertos around. Even Period musicians don’t play with this balance of good musicality and flat-out imagination.

I never tire of listening to this recording. I think there was real chemistry between Pahud and Tognetti – both very imaginative musicians. Intensely evocative playing of already naturalistic music. And they’re playing modern instruments with GREAT period-correct style.

Pahud’s playing on a technical level is otherworldly of course, but he is never just showboating. I honestly listen to his playing all the time and it makes me stop and think, and listen again. Totally informs my playing on a musical AND technical level that I don’t find with any other player. Not that there aren’t many other great players around, but Pahud is the complete package in ways I continually find illuminating.

I just came across this recording on Apple Music of the flute player, Jean-Louis Beaumardier.

Lovely piccolo playing – and C and Alto flute! Sweet, lighter tone, and sensitive French School playing. He is a student of Jean-Pierre Rampal’s and sounds great, especially playing the French pieces such as Debussy’s Syrinx.

Great febrile, dynamic feel to playing to playing, the vibrato is very alive, rubato is feels impulsive (however planned out it truly is!) Lovely alto flute playing on pieces like Jolivet’s Incantation.