Sonata for Flute and Piano (2023)
flute, piano
flute, piano
Interview and virtual world premiere with Mimi Stillman and Charles Abramovic. Performance begins at 24:30.
Recorded by Bianca Morris (flute) and Ben Pawlak (piano).
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Click image for score sample.
Score & Part (digital download): $20.00
Score Only (digital download): $14.00 Score & Part (hard copy): $35.00 + shipping Score Only (hard copy): $22.00 + shipping |
Program Note
For many years, the flute has been one of the favorite instruments of my compositional imagination, featuring prominently in several chamber and orchestra works of mine. This primacy has a good deal to do with Mimi Stillman, one of the great American solo flutists, whom I met when I was seventeen. Mimi has championed my music from my high school days to the present, always with incisive thought and sincere encouragement, and therefore I made it my mission to one day write a sonata for her.
The resulting work spans a great deal of emotional and dramatic ground. An incorrigible melodist at heart, I wanted to write a piece that would showcase every possible nook and cranny of the flute while still remaining fundamentally linear and expressive. Of course, so much of the standard flute repertoire is, by nature, extraordinarily beautiful and melodic, yet often leaning to the more polite and pastoral side of things. Rhythm being another essential aspect of my imagination, I felt that there was space for a flute sonata with fire in its belly—wild, exciting, fast, dancelike—and simultaneously still lyrical.
Movement I of the sonata tears out of the gate already in motion. Immediately, the main motive of the piece presents itself—an upward leap followed by a trail of descending notes—as flute lines juxtapose with punctuation in the piano until a more cantabile section gains control. Here, the main motive transforms into a gradually widening cascading gesture (falling a minor-second, major-third, perfect-fourth), which recurs constantly throughout the remainder of the piece, fixed in its form. After a stormy furiant—a Czech folk dance—followed by a cadenza for the flute, the main material returns to bring the movement to its bookend conclusion.
A much more contemplative mood takes over in Movement II. Born of deep spiritual feeling on my part, though not, say, in the literal descriptive sense of a Messiaen or Bach, the movement is as much a prayer as a song, organically moving from section to section, ebbing and flowing. The cascading four-note motive from Movement I permeates the texture along with a new motive: a plagal cadence which can never seem to stay in one key.
Movement III brings back the fire and frenzy of the first movement, this time to an even greater degree. Careening between the marchlike and the jiglike, the whirlwind uproots the cascading and plagal motives from the previous movements and twirls them into the fun. Suddenly, two-thirds of the way through, a radiant chord in the piano stops the proceedings in their tracks, transporting the music back to the cantabile section of Movement I. Not to be out done, skittish eighth-notes regain control in the piano, ramping up into rollicking coda which briefly nods to the opening of the entire sonata before the flute erupts on the highest note of the piece for the grand finale.
—Jacob Beranek
For many years, the flute has been one of the favorite instruments of my compositional imagination, featuring prominently in several chamber and orchestra works of mine. This primacy has a good deal to do with Mimi Stillman, one of the great American solo flutists, whom I met when I was seventeen. Mimi has championed my music from my high school days to the present, always with incisive thought and sincere encouragement, and therefore I made it my mission to one day write a sonata for her.
The resulting work spans a great deal of emotional and dramatic ground. An incorrigible melodist at heart, I wanted to write a piece that would showcase every possible nook and cranny of the flute while still remaining fundamentally linear and expressive. Of course, so much of the standard flute repertoire is, by nature, extraordinarily beautiful and melodic, yet often leaning to the more polite and pastoral side of things. Rhythm being another essential aspect of my imagination, I felt that there was space for a flute sonata with fire in its belly—wild, exciting, fast, dancelike—and simultaneously still lyrical.
Movement I of the sonata tears out of the gate already in motion. Immediately, the main motive of the piece presents itself—an upward leap followed by a trail of descending notes—as flute lines juxtapose with punctuation in the piano until a more cantabile section gains control. Here, the main motive transforms into a gradually widening cascading gesture (falling a minor-second, major-third, perfect-fourth), which recurs constantly throughout the remainder of the piece, fixed in its form. After a stormy furiant—a Czech folk dance—followed by a cadenza for the flute, the main material returns to bring the movement to its bookend conclusion.
A much more contemplative mood takes over in Movement II. Born of deep spiritual feeling on my part, though not, say, in the literal descriptive sense of a Messiaen or Bach, the movement is as much a prayer as a song, organically moving from section to section, ebbing and flowing. The cascading four-note motive from Movement I permeates the texture along with a new motive: a plagal cadence which can never seem to stay in one key.
Movement III brings back the fire and frenzy of the first movement, this time to an even greater degree. Careening between the marchlike and the jiglike, the whirlwind uproots the cascading and plagal motives from the previous movements and twirls them into the fun. Suddenly, two-thirds of the way through, a radiant chord in the piano stops the proceedings in their tracks, transporting the music back to the cantabile section of Movement I. Not to be out done, skittish eighth-notes regain control in the piano, ramping up into rollicking coda which briefly nods to the opening of the entire sonata before the flute erupts on the highest note of the piece for the grand finale.
—Jacob Beranek
