The Swiss flutist Emmanuel Pahud has not shied away from going afield of conventional repertory over his career, playing a good deal of new music and even venturing into jazz. Yet perhaps nothing he has recorded thus far equals this album, his first on the Warner Classics label, which took over EMI's roster, for sheer daring. The album graphics do not really convey what's happening here. Yes, the 12 Fantasias for solo flute of Georg Philipp Telemann are included in full, but they're not played sequentially (which ...
Read More
The Swiss flutist Emmanuel Pahud has not shied away from going afield of conventional repertory over his career, playing a good deal of new music and even venturing into jazz. Yet perhaps nothing he has recorded thus far equals this album, his first on the Warner Classics label, which took over EMI's roster, for sheer daring. The album graphics do not really convey what's happening here. Yes, the 12 Fantasias for solo flute of Georg Philipp Telemann are included in full, but they're not played sequentially (which historically is probably fine). Instead, they alternate with other works, from the 20th and 21st centuries. The most famous modern flute piece, Debussy's Syrinx, is not included, but in a sense, all the other works are its descendant: the program begins just four years later, with the Sonata Appassionata, Op. 140, of Sigfrid Karg-Elert, and as annotator Denis Verroust points out, it was Syrinx that touched off what has become a full-scale revival of solo flute music. Pahud attempts to pair the...
Read Less
