(SW1057)
The musical material of this four-movement suite from 1977 develops from the smallest motivic germ cells. Carefully, almost hesitantly, the flute in the first movement (Prelude) feels its way forward in small and large second steps until everything culminates in a great climax, only to gradually sink back into the initial mode.
In contrast, rapid, dance-like triple rhythms determine the following Courante, while the slow Romanza that follows is rhapsodically free and lives from the interplay of binary and ternary rhythmic models.
The finale is a Tarantella, whose two-part formal structure and very fast triple-eighths groups are a clear reference to the baroque Gique.
With its approximately fifteen-minute duration, the suite offers a contrasting and in part highly virtuosic examination of historical forms in contemporary musical language and is in any case an important enrichment of the modern flute repertoire.
Martin Schmeck