Laurel Ann Maurer
Flutist Laurel Ann Maurer began her musical studies in Seattle where she was a member of the Seattle Youth Symphony and a recipient of awards from the Seattle Young Artists Festival. Her musical career led her to New York City where she studied with Julius Baker, Samuel Baron and Jeanne Baxtresser. Her principal teacher, Mr. Baker, has stated that she is "one of our outstanding and gifted flutists."
As an award winner from such organizations as The National Association of Composers - USA, The Chautauqua Institute and the National Orchestra of New York, Laurel Ann Maurer has appeared as flute soloist throughout the United States, including performances at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. Ms. Maurer has also been a guest on various television and radio programs, including live performances on National Public Radio's WNYC.
At the forefront of Ms. Maurer's career is her dedication to contemporary music. Her conviction and dramatic style have compelled many fine composers to comment, among them Otto Luening, who wrote, "She projects composer's ideas with authority and elegance." Joan Tower has written, "Thanks so much for doing such an outstanding jobthis performance (is) one of the best I've received." Augusta Read Thomas said, "Bravowe composers need you," and Meyer Kupferman has called her playing, "Truly sensational."
Her belief in the music of today has led her to commission new works for flute. Among them is the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Chaconne Sonata for flute and piano by Meyer Kupferman. The New York Times wrote of this virtuosic work, "Mr. Kupferman's new Chaconne Sonata isaccessibly melodicIn all four movements, (he) makes his way around the flute's full range and poses other technical challenges, which Ms. Maurer easily mastered" In further commenting on her performance, the reviewer wrote that Laurel Ann Maurer, is "a secure technician and an assured, communicative interpreter."
Laurel Ann Maurer has recorded music of Leo Kraft for CRI and can be heard on many film soundtracks. She has held principal chairs in The National Orchestra of New York, New York City Symphony, Long Island Chamber Orchestra, Queens Philharmonia and the Chautauqua Festival Orchestra. She is currently principal flute of the Salt Lake Symphony and Director of American FluteWorks.
Ms. Maurer performs exclusively on Miyazawa flutes and is a Miyazawa artist.
Pianist Joanne Pearce Martin enjoys an international career as a soloist, chamber musician and recording artist. A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, she has performed as soloist with orchestras including the Philadelphia Orchestra. The many distinguished musicians with whom she has appeared in recital include cellists Lynn Harrell and Steven Isserlis, violinists Joshua Bell and Joseph Silverstein and flutist Julius Baker. She performs regularly at major summer music festivals and concert series around the country. Based in Los Angeles, she has played in the Los Angeles Philharmonic and appears as a guest artist on their chamber music series.
The New American Grove describes Robert Muczynski's style as "earnest, economical, and unostentatious, characterized by spare, neo-classical textures, a gently restrained lyricism, and, in fast movements, strongly accented, irregular meters, which create a vigorous rhythmic drive." This description certainly holds true for his 1961 composition, Sonata for Flute and Piano, a modern yet melodic work that has become a recital favorite for flutists, and which opens this compact disc program of modern American masterworks for the flute.
Sonata for Flute and Piano is in four movements: the opening (Allegro deciso) is energetic and syncopated; the second movement (Scherzo: Vivace) is a folk dance propelled by motor rhythms; a somber, reflective mood dominates the third movement (Andante); the concluding fourth movement (Allegro con moto) is spirited and full of life.
This is an energetic and optimistic work, and perhaps reflects both the American "can-do" mood of the early 1960s and the influence of some European contemporary composers admired by Muczynski, such as Alexander Tcherepnin, with whom he studied at DePaul University.
Although Aaron Copland's 1971 composition, Duo for Flute and Piano, is a relatively late work, its style echoes his earlier, most accessible works, with touches of both Copland's jazz-inspired works from the 1920s and his famous folk-inspired ballet scores of the 1940s.
Duo for Flute and Piano was commissioned by no less than seventy pupils and friends of the longtime principal flutist of the Philadelphia Orchestra, William Kincaid, who died in 1967.
Copland wrote that the work was "naturally influenced by the fact that I was composing for Kincaid's students, not for future generations (although I hoped younger flutists would play Duo eventually). Also, I was using material from earlier sketches in my notebooks, and that may have influenced the style of the piece. For example, the beginning of the first movement, which opens with a solo passage for flute, recalls the first movement of my Third Symphony." (from Breaking New Ground/1971-1979, included in Copland Since 1943, by Aaron Copland and Vivian Perlis, St. Martin's Press, NY.)
Duo for Flute and Piano is in three movements: the first (marked Flowing) is broadly spun out in Copland's most appealing manner; the lonely mood of the second movement (Poetic, somewhat mournful) serves as a fitting memorial elegy to William Kincaid; the third movement (Lively, with bounce) provides a dance-inspired close.
The work was premiered in Philadelphia by flutist Elaine Shaffer and pianist Hephzibah Menuhin in October of 1971.
Reviewing the first performance in Boston the following year, Michael Steinberg of the Boston Globe provided a prophetically accurate assessment: "The Duo is lightweight work of a masterful craftsman. It is going to give pleasure to flutists and their audiences for a long time."
Meyer Kupferman has provided the following notes about his work:
Chaconne Sonata for flute and piano, completed in 1993, is a large-scale, four movement work commissioned by Laurel Ann Maurer and composed especially for her. Although it is only the first movement that is firmly cast in the traditional chaconne design, the remaining
three movements clearly reflect an ongoing setting of those essential harmonic and motivic energies drawn from the opening four bar phrase of the chaconne.
The piano and flute roles are conceived as complex, passionate and totally complete protagonists governing an enormous "sound canvas." The relentless basso ostinato of the opening Lento espressivo provides a truly granitic foundation to the continuous dialogue of variation between the flute and the right hand of the piano. The richness of the evolving textures for both instruments and the intensity of the harmonies they generate, soon set the stage for a profound drama.
While the first and last movements clearly reflect the tonality of A minor, the growing tension of the sonata's many chromatic invasions, particularly in the middle movements, suggests something more in keeping with an atonal adventure. The second movement Allegro agitato abounds in stretched intervals and extreme keyboard registrations whose rhythms often touch upon a temperament of contained violence.
The third movement Largo is totally introspective and sustained, but here again the dissonant chromaticism removes all traces of tonality nothing therefore is at rest in this Largo.
The Allegro quieto which closes the piece once again asserts the A minor tonality. This is in a unique, dance-like 5/8 form which the composer suggests is really a "Macedonian Rondo." At first, the shape is deceptive because the rondo starts very gently and quietly. Little by little, however, the movement builds in energy ultimately climaxing in an enormous outburst of power, with flute and piano seeming to break through all limits of range and virtuosity.
Composer Joan Tower wrote Hexachords in 1972 for her friend and colleague, flutist Patricia Spencer of the DaCapo Chamber Players.
Prior to 1974, Tower utilized what she called "maps" to outline the complex structures and procedures she employed in writing her music. The title Hexachords refers to that work's "map," which is a six-note, unordered chromatic collection of pitches.
The challenge of writing a work for unaccompanied flute is here met by "mapping" a wide variety of contrasting colors, dynamics, and rhythms through all the instrument's registers. Hexachords offers a virtuoso flutist the opportunity to show off her technique and imagination in following the directions indicated on Tower's "map."
In keeping with her "map" metaphor, Tower has written that Hexachords is "divided into five sections, which are most easily differentiated by a sense of either going somewhere or staying somewhere."
On his music in general, Leo Kraft has written: "Out of the enormous number of possibilities available, I have chosen to follow a certain line of development growing out of earlier 20th-century practices that appeal to me. I keep my ear and mind open to what's new in music and keep trying to incorporate new acquisitions into my stream of musical thought." (quote from American Composers: A Biographical Dictionary, compiled by David Ewen, Putnam, NY)
Kraft's 1963 Fantasy for Flute and Piano incorporates some "new acquisitions" that were in the air at that time, influenced perhaps by the choice and chance scores of John Cage, which offered both a challenge and opportunity to musicians to participate to a greater degree in the compositions they performed.
Fantasy for Flute and Piano is written with no bar lines, meter, or tempo indications. It is the performer's responsibility to interpret freely the musical "events" offered, according to the momentum of the interplay between the performers and the score. The work is characterized by wide intervals and articulated rhythmic patterns. Like Tower's Hexachords, Kraft's Fantasy for Flute and Piano is a challenging showpiece for its performers.
In the spring of 1958, while in Salzburg for rehearsals of his opera, Vanessa, Samuel Barber met and befriended a young German art student and amateur flutist named Manfred Ibel. The following year, Barber wrote a short work for him to play. The original pencil score was titled Elegy, later altered to Canzone (for Manfred).
The same melody was then used as the theme of the second movement (also titled Canzone) of Barber's Pulitzer Prize-winning Piano Concerto, written for and premiered by John Browning in 1962, and published as Barber's Op. 38. In the Piano Concerto's Canzone movement, the flute still plays a dominant role, although the melody is expanded and shared by the oboe and piano soloist. The second movement is the romantic heart of the Piano Concerto, and the entire work is dedicated to Manfred Ibel.
The third version of this haunting melody, for flute (or violin) and piano, shares its title and tempo marking, Canzone: Moderato, with the second movement of the Piano Concerto. This is the version recorded on this compact disc. Based on the original 1959 Elegy, this version was completed in 1961, before the premiere of the Piano Concerto, and published as Barber's Op. 38a.
Barber must have been fond of this unabashedly Romantic melody, since there exists a fourth version, an arrangement for oboe and strings, dated 1971-1978, and published posthumously in 1981 as Barber's Op. 48 under the title Canzonetta.
Sonata, op. 14 for flute & piano
Poetic, somewhat mournful (5:17)
Lively, with bounce (3:24)
Chaconne Sonata for flute & piano
Hexachords for solo flute (7:10)
Fantasy for flute & piano (5:37)
Canzone for flute & piano (3:50)
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