Flute Concerto
Instrumentation
Flute and reduced orchestra: 0, ca, 1+1, 1+1, - 0, 2, 2, 0, timp, perc, hp, cel, str.
Year
2017
Duration
16'30"
Commission
Commissioned by the Brisbane Philharmonic Orchestra.
Score and parts
Score and parts can be obtained directly from the composer.
Program Note
The Flute Concerto invites the listener to journey with the flute soloist as they navigate a unique, atmospheric orchestral sound-world. The landscape is still, but never stagnant and slowly expands in energy, textural shapes, momentum and transforming beauty. The harmonic language is an organic and colourful blend of diatonic and non-diatonic harmonies; blurring sonorities, chromatic flute lines and shifting perspectives of light and dark that each seek out a strange kind of harmonic beauty. There is no programmatic narrative to the Flute Concerto; its concerns are purely musical, creating an interesting relationship between soloist and orchestra. The audience is encouraged to listen for the shifting colours and isolation of timbres in the reduced instrumentation, with saturating divided strings, condensed woodwind and brass and very few tutti passages.
Is the musical world at its chore: dark, beautiful, haunting, serene, at peace, unstable, in flux or all of the above? Where does the flute exist and how does it progress and transform? Does the orchestra influence the flute development or does the flute change the direction of the orchestra? Questioning is at the heart of the musical material. The work begins with closely related intervals often led by the divided high strings and auxiliary percussion filling the space as the flute slowly emerges from the atmospheric world, blurring the traditional concerto roles of orchestra and soloist as the material blends in the space or rises to the foreground. Framed and influenced by a virtuosic cadenza, the work is changed as the flute leads the orchestra towards new ground.
Performance History
23 Jul 2017: at Metro Concert Series # 3. Featuring the Brisbane Philharmonic Orchestra, Jonathan Henderson (flute) and Michael Keen.
Audio/Video Sample