Music for Flute & Organ

A unique recital on record, for a

hauntingly beautiful instrumental

combination, featuring several first

recordings. The duo of trumpet and organ is a wellestablished one, having attracted

composers from the early Baroque

period onwards. The combination of

flute and organ, while requiring careful

balancing so that the organ does not

overwhelm the flute, is no less

attractive in it's way, and has drawn

from composers a more varied palette

of expression. This new album is made

by a duo of Piedmontese musicians

who have explored the riches of the

flute-and-organ repertoire to come up

with a balanced selection of pieces

written by 20th- and 21st-century

composers on both sides of the

Atlantic.

Duo Les Brumes begin with an

undoubted masterpiece: the Sonata da

Chiesa which the Swiss composer Frank

Martin originally composed in 1939 for

viola d'amore and organ. Because his

Dutch wife Maria Boeke was an

excellent flautist, he also produced a

version for flute and organ in 1941. The

sonata's three sections enclose a

sequence of gentle, neoclassical dance

movements between two reflective

slow movements. The album's other

substantial work is Ain Karim, a

fantasia composed in 1995 by the Swiss

organist-composer Daniel Roth. Aïn

Karim is the name of the place near

Jerusalem where Mary, mother of

Jesus, is thought to have visited her

cousin Elisabeth and spoken the words

of the 'Magnificat'. Daniel Roth has

taken part of this text ('He puts down

the mighty from their seat and exalts

the humble and meek') to emphasise

the contrast between the 'small' flute

and the 'monumental' organ. In between, Duo Les Brumes present a

gallery of vividly coloured miniatures: a

suite of Four Pieces composed in 1962

by the Austrian composer Augustin

Franz Kropfreiter (1936-2003), within

the same kind of 'modern neoclassical'

vein as Martin's Sonata da Chiesa; then

Five Pieces by Jean Langlais, more

extrovert in character. Two Canadian

composers are also represented with

the radiant, soaring Melodia by Denis

Bédard and the Elegy by Michael

Conway Baker.