Flutist Katherine Bryan, having found success with her Silver Bow violin-to-flute transcriptions, now turns to operatic material arranged for the flute with Silver Voice. The concept once again wouldn't have sounded strange to a listener from the 19th century, especially inasmuch as Bryan includes not only the promised opera arias but also fantasies -- in the grand manner, but composed in the 20th century -- on Mozart's The Magic Flute and Bizet's Carmen. The results are a bit mixed. Mozart's "Queen of the Night" does not ...
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Flutist Katherine Bryan, having found success with her Silver Bow violin-to-flute transcriptions, now turns to operatic material arranged for the flute with Silver Voice. The concept once again wouldn't have sounded strange to a listener from the 19th century, especially inasmuch as Bryan includes not only the promised opera arias but also fantasies -- in the grand manner, but composed in the 20th century -- on Mozart's The Magic Flute and Bizet's Carmen. The results are a bit mixed. Mozart's "Queen of the Night" does not have her unforgettably unpleasant edge when played on the flute, and the melody of his "Dove sono" loses impact when shorn of the text. But Bryan's attractive tone carries the purely lyric numbers: Dvorák's "Song to the Moon," even the "Flower Duet" of Délibes, with Kevin Gowland on second flute. The Orchestra of Opera North under Bramwell Tovey (apparently no relation to the musicologist Donald Francis Tovey) effectively tones down the operatic material to flute dimensions, and the...
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