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.