Laurel Zucker Cantilena 660232, 660302 & 660352 [RB]: Classical CD Reviews

Laurel Zucker's Cantilena label has been prolifically productive and all the more welcome for the warm music-making of Zucker and her instrumental partners. From its considerable catalogue here are three discs each pairing Zucker's flute with one other instrument. All Cantilena issues feature strikingly coloured cover art by Dee Sanchez and all use heavy card sleeves with a glued in plastic stem face into which the disc is fitted. The sleeves carry concise information about the music and the composers and are miracles of good design which balance pleasure for the eye with the legibility necessary to carry information.

Sonata da Camera
Roberto Sierra (b. 1953) wrote his set of ten miniatures, Flower Pieces in 1994. They are short warm and sensuous. Everything breathes a warm and fragrant beauty. A Puerto Rican who studied with Ligeti, Sierra's music is in this case sensuous and melodic - a near cousin to Ravel's Introduction and Allegro. Alwyn's Naiades is designated a Fantasy-Sonata and its ecstatic light-bathed warmth, a degree more sultry than the Sierra, is evidence of Alwyn's grounding as a professional flautist. Zucker shows the ability to hold wondrously long notes with seemingly endless breath reserves and little aural evidence of gasps of breath. Nuncio F Mondello was better known in America’s jazz band circuit as Toots Mondello. His pensively melancholic Poem shows Mondello's other face as a classical composer in the warm Ravelian tradition. Marius Flothuis wrote his Sonata da Camera in a Dutch concentration camp in 1943. Its movements are by turns dreamy-warm, slyly jazzy, slow motion Havanaise and evening whimsy. David Noon was a pupil of Davidovsky and Milhaud and has had a most distinguished academic career in the USA. His Sonata da Camera in four movements breaks the sultry-ecstatic mood of the rest of the disc with some lively, rhythmic, good-humoured fun, breaking off only in the long Sarabande for a touching and yearningly nostalgic moment - not at all archaic in its resonance.

Romanza Andaluza
Zucker's gorgeous tone, tasteful phrasing and breath control here meet the clean and pleasingly judged playing of Marc Delpriora in a collection with an Hispanic emphasis. The Sarasate strikes a warm egalitarian balance between the two instruments and is well within the Iberian style. The little known Pessard is represented by a graceful Andalouse. The four movement Buenos Aires (1995) by Pujol ‘unlulls’ us into something with vitality and snappy jazzy pace in Pompeya, finds a classical style for the cool evening of Palermo, syncopated playfulness in San Telmo and finally in this ever so slightly commercial suite comes Microcentro with its anxious welter of interleaved down-pattering figures and siren wails. The other two part Pujol work is similar in its engaging atmosphere and well worth hearing for its poetry and rhythmic urgency. I recommend hearing the Candombe de los Buenos Tiempo for its optimistic throwing aside of the pervasive heat. It has a remarkably engaging liveliness complete with percussive effects delivered against the bodywork of the guitar. Rodrigo's Aria Antiqua does indeed look back to earlier ages in music of largely slow dignity. There is more of that in the Andante moderato of the Serenata al alba del Dia but the better known Rodrigo of the guitar concertos can be discerned very clearly in the Allegro at tr. 12. Gonzalez's lighter-hearted Danza de los Amantes Efimeros was originally for violin and guitar but has been transcribed by Zucker. This Colombian composer's piece has an original and fantastical air breaking out of any suggestion of hackneyed territory. The disc finishes with three transcriptions from Granados's Danzas espagnoles amongst which the clever and endearing Danza triste stands out (tr. 14).

Master Music
This is not I think the first time Franck's violin sonata has been recorded in a version for flute and piano. It gives another warmer accent to this well known work and also shows Zucker breaking away from her accustomed territory of suites, genre pieces and atmosphere poems. This grand work of the romantic repertoire receives the customary warm and long-lined lyrical treatment. It works remarkably well especially in the finale. The piano is tactfully balanced and if anything sounds as if its top end presence has been toned down so that at all times it sounds velvety and hardly ever percussive. Ravel's sultry Pièce en forme de Habanera is given here in the transcription by Louis Fleury and at moments looks forward, not very far, to the Rapsodie espagnole. Fauré's Morceau de concours is one of a host of competition pieces - ultimately unremarkable. The Debussy Little Shepherd (no. 5 from Children's Corner) is warmly fruity and fades into an evening that seems to breathe Saharan heat. Schubert's Introduction and Variations on a Theme from the Mullerlieder (not Mullerleider, Cantilena) op. 25 makes a and poetic rare appearance in this classically-based collection. The extended and inventive Variations are on the song Trockne (not Trochne) Blumen from Schöne Müllerin. Usually anything by the prolific and long-lived Milhaud is going to be a delight and so it proves with the flute Sonatine. There's a sinuously insidious Tendre, a troubled rippling Souple with some shivering undercurrents and a final confident almost swaggering Clair. Marc Shapira is discreetly supportive throughout. Zucker is very much in the foreground and no one can regret that in the face of such emotionally communicative playing.

Rob Barnett