Category Archives: Wye the flute?

Aldo Baerten Flute Recital

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Aldo Baerten, flute; Stefan De Schepper, piano

Duke’s Hall, Royal Academy of Music, London, October 5th

I seem to be getting along to a lot of Belgian flautist Aldo Baerten’s recitals (this is the third), and have now also had the opportunity to hear him play a piece twice! This performance, given at the Royal Academy of Music in London as part of the British Flute Society (BFS) Premier Flautist Series, was my favourite so far, mostly due to an engaging and varied program that showed off Baerten’s musicality and technical prowess on the flute.

Baerten opened with J.S. Bach’s Partita in C minor, BWV 997, and, while the performance was sprightly and imbibed with character, I felt that it was the low-point of the recital. It seemed like a bit of a warm-up for the soloist, and in many ways the stylistic understanding of pianist Stefan De Schepper  were more consistently visible. Of particular note, Baerten chose to start both slow movements incredibly softly, to the point that it made me rather nervous for him as an audience member!

The unquestionable triumph of the program was Hindemith’s Sonata, which I also heard Baerten perform at the 2013 Australian Flute Festival, and seems almost to be his signature work. Here, the sprightliness evident in the Bach came into its own, particularly in the concluding Sehr Lebhaft-Marsch, where it really did feel like the performers were just having fun together. Baerten has an impeccable control of pianissimo high notes, which this work gave him ample opportunity to demonstrate to sensuous effect. The colours created in these moments were utterly stunning.

I was pleased to see that Baerten had mixed Bach with more contemporary repertoire, programming two of Kurtag’s Signs, Games and Messages as well as a very new work, Suite for flute and piano, by Belgian composer Robert Groslot. I’m a fan of Kurtag, and particularly these little miniatures, and was delighted to hear them performed live. Hommage à J.S.B, in particular, was rendered with wonderful attention to the musical contour. The Groslot, while admirably performed, didn’t entirely hold my attention. Moments, in particular shimmering internal section of the Metamorphosis movement where flute and piano threaded in and out of each others’ sound, were fascinating. However, the whole was a bit pastoral for me, and lacked any logical compositional direction through the movements.

Baerten concluded with a flute and piano arrangement of Debussy’s Prélude à l’Après-Midi d’un Faune, a bold undertaking considering that most of the audience were flautists! Both his and De Schepper’s sense of colour was stunning, encapsulating the sweeping orchestral sounds of Debussy’s original. However, Baerten did take rather a lot of rhythmic liberty in the solo passages, and I was not the only flautist in the audience distracted by this.

The recital was followed with a short question-and-answer session, which I found engaging and insightful. I hope to hear Baerten (and hopefully some more twentieth-century works) very soon!

 

Day 5 – October 5th – Birthday in London

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I’m utterly ready for bed and sleep, but a challenge is a challenge. Forgive me for keeping it short tonight!

Today was my 25th birthday, and happened to coincide with Aldo Baerten giving a flute recital in at the Royal Academy of Music in London. So, after a morning of scales and Skyping (friends and family in Australia), I headed up to London with Trevor and the class.

The concert was great, with interesting repertoire choices and superb playing. Hopefully I’ll have time to write a proper review tomorrow. Afterwards, we headed out to a dumpling restaurant in China Town for dinner. Oh, and Trevor just happened to invite William Bennett and his wife along as well!!!

Day 4 – October 4th – Getting in some real practice!

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Today was the first ‘free’ day we’ve had so far, free as in no lessons, orientation or Tesco trips. Instead, we had the whole day to practise, and plenty of motivation after yesterday’s lessons.

The figures are as follows:

Total hours: 5

Hours practising ‘warm-up’ exercises from Trevor’s Complete Daily Exercises book: 3

Cups of tea: 4

Episodes of Dr Who: 1 (I have to maintain sanity somehow!)

Feeling in lips: …

Trevor dropped by in the morning to give us some goodies from the bakery and bags of locally grown apples and pears. It was lovely, though we are now rather swimming in apples. I do suspect that he might have had another motive for coming round though; when the first comment on entering the door is ‘isn’t it lovely to hear all those scales’, I rather wonder whether he makes regular visits up to the dairies just to check that we’re practising!

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Sunset over the downs

It rained for most of the afternoon, but at about 6pm it cleared just in time for the sunset. Down the road and round the bend, there is a wonderful view out over the downs, and I wandered there along the wet hedgerows. I arrived to see the still-ominous clouds streaked with pink and gold, as if someone had set fire to them.

Day 3 – October 3rd – Moyse, Andersen and Tescos

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Only the third day, and it feels like we might be starting to get into the swing of things. I went for a run again in the morning, and took some lovely pictures of the sunrise over the downs. There is a rather nasty hill that I need to get back up on the way home, and I’m hoping that in the coming week I can make it up without stopping. Both mornings so far, I’ve had a little breather by the field of cows.

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Running at sunrise

Yesterday, Trevor casually dropped that he wanted us each to play both an Andersen study (op. 15) and one of the Moyse 24 little melodic studies in class today, which sent us all into a bit of a practice panic. I decided to go with what I knew, and picked Moyse No. 3 and Andersen No. 3. We started class at 9am, and spent the first two hours playing an easy tune (from memory, transposing it up by semitones) and then exercise no. 2 from Seven Daily Exercises by Reichert. I’m keen to get this one off the book as soon as possible, but then ended up spending quite a lot of time doing a ‘solo’ because I wasn’t being expressive enough in my phrasing!

Studies started after the morning tea break, and everyone managed to play a different one from each collection. My Moyse wasn’t too bad, in that we didn’t go into it for half an hour! I need to remember that staccatos are always espressivo, and not to do funny things with my rhythm because I’m trying to be expressive. It rather sounds like I’m never going to win! My Andersen was less pleasing, and we spent a long time talking about the use of appoggiaturas in simple tunes – starting with Three Blind Mice. I’ve now been given a selection of basic tunes to practise so that I can “stop doing funny things all the time”. All in all, nothing too harsh in terms of comments, but I do rather think that we’re being broken in gradually! Proper lessons (including the walk across the fields to get there) start Monday, and from then on it’s two Andersen studies a week plus scales, exercises, excerpts and repertoire.

At 3pm we headed for Tescos, which is a drive away and so a weekly trip only (usually on Tuesdays). It felt like a return to civilisation! In anticipation of all the practice to come, I bought plenty of tea.

In the evenings, we all join Trevor on walks round villages and surrounding countryside. It’s nice to get out, and to talk with the others about things other than the flute. We’ve been issued with torches and high-vis vests for the laneways at night, and the air is crisp and delicious. Trevor knows all the cats in the village by name, and makes a point of feeding them all. This evening, he brought along a set of binoculars and we looked at the craters on the moon. I’m sure that once there is a little less light moonlight, there will be a huge number of stars to see.

 

Day 2 – October 2nd – Orientation

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Well we’ve managed to cram quite a bit into the day and a half since arriving here, Trevor certainly hasn’t given us much time to find out feet!

I’m living in the ‘new dairy’ with Roya from the US and Chin Ting from Malaysia, while the other students are in the ‘old dairy’ down the road. They’re basic but homely, and in the middle of absolutely nowhere. This part of Kent is listed as an ‘area of outstanding natural beauty’ (think rolling hills, fields of sheep and tiny lanes with overgrown hedgerows), and so it’s almost impossible to build anything or widen the roads. On my run this morning, I passed three houses, a church, two tractors and at least a hundred sheep! It was a lovely time of day to see the English countryside, and the sunrise splotches of pink and orange complete a rather picturesque view all the way.

Last night, we were invited for dinner by a lovely family in the village, who accompanied dinner with the promise that the next six months would be tough but worth it. We would all end up in tears at some point, that’s just the way that Trevor teaches.

This morning’s orientation session gave me a good glimpse of the coming months. We alternated some ‘light’ playing with being shown round the flute studio and all its resources. Playing consisted of a lot of warm-up exercises (both for expression and technique), which we are expected to play easily, from memory at each class. After an hour of that and my practice session this evening, I can certainly feel the muscles beginning to work!

Trevor’s studio is fascinating; full to bursting with CDs, sheet music, books and old and ethnic flutes. Quite a sight! In the course of our practice and projects we’ll get to explore and use a lot of things, and I hope I’ll have time to browse as well.

Already there’s a bit too much to write for a quick blog post. For now, though, it’s bed time, to dream of the Moyse and Andersen studies that I’ll be playing in class tomorrow!