THE WHIRLWIND WITHIN
Roberto Alvarez, Flute
Kseniia Vokhmianina, Piano
Odradek Records ODRCD247 / TT: 66’13”
What does contemporary flute music sound like? According to the Singapore-based duo of Spanish flautist Roberto Alvarez and Ukrainian pianist Kseniia Vokhmianina, it is very approachable, a heady mix of 20th and 21st styles eclectically influenced by pop, folk, jazz and dance elements. Their Odradek debut album was a Covid pandemic project, when both musicians were stranded in the tiny island-state with limited performance opportunities and no overseas tours. The unexpected happy outcome was the world premiere recordings of flute and piano works by seven composers from Europe (pre-Brexit UK included), Central and South America, composed between 1991 and 2020.
The delightful programme is bookended by works by two Britons. James Rae’s three-movement Sonatina (2007) and Mike Mower’s four-movement Flute Sonata No.3 (2003) share the common quality of being totally accessible. The spirit of Claude Bolling channeled by James Galway resides in Rae’s little gem, with movements titled Aquarelle, Nocturne and Fire Dance, the last cast in exuberant tarantella rhythm. Mower, himself a flautist, gives the initial impression of emotion distance, but his music soon breaks into different popular styles. Cuban and Afro-Caribbean pop, boogie woogie, jazz and blues vibes later dominate the movements and never dissipate.
Spaniard Daniel Sanchez Velasco’s Dance Preludes (2020) uses folk melodies and dance rhythms in a very engaging manner. A rhythm to be found in Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony opens the first of these. Another almost breaks out into Faure’s Sicilienne (from Pelleas et Melisande) but resists the temptation, and elsewhere the Romanticism of Granados and Rachmaninov may be sensed. Gonzalo Casielles Camblor (1931-2020) was Alvarez’s longtime teacher in Asturias, Spain. His El Vals de la Fortuna (2014, Fortune Waltz) is based on the notes D#-E-B-C-A, devised from the numbers of a winning lottery ticket. Just under two minutes, it is an earworm of a melody not unlike that of Tarrega’s Gran Vals (that Nokia ringtone!).
The Mexican Jose Elizondo’s Limoncello (2018) expresses Mediterranean warmth and openness, akin to the lime liqueur of of its title. With the Argentine Pablo Aguirre, references to Ginastera and Piazzolla are almost unavoidable. Many of their enduring traits are to be found in three pieces; fast bounding rhythms in La Fuga (1997, The Escape), the nostalgic and slow milonga of Distancias (2002, Distant) and sheer exuberance of Pasion Ensordecedero (1991, Deafening Passion).
The Catalan composer Elisenda Fabregas’s Sonata No.1 (1995) is perhaps the most dissonant and modernistic work in the disc. Displaying the greatest range of moods and emotions, from sadness and grief to anger and fury, the music ran a gamut of unease and agitation, borne of a sublimated inner strife and rage. None of it is atonal or serialist, hence eminently listenable. Its four movements could easily be summated by the album’s title Within The Whirlwind. This amiable anthology, distinguished by an understated and free-wheeling virtuosity from both performers, is already on my shortlist of the year’s best albums.
You may buy the physical CD / download tracks here:
The Whirlwind Within - Odradek Records: ODRCD427 - CD or download | Presto Music
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