Sharon Bezaly

In Beamish’s own words the symphony represents ‘a celebration of the beauty of Scotland, and the inspiration, both musical and visual, which I have found here.’ The piece combines elements of the traditional music of the Scottish bagpipe with an instrumental ‘setting’ of Psalm 104, praising the majesty of creation. Beamish was commissioned to write a concerto for the violinist Anthony Marwood, and from him received a copy of the novel All Quiet on the Western Front. The three movements of the concerto can be traced to three particular passages in the book, and are influenced by the composer’s ‘deep-rooted sense of the futility and tragedy of war’. The flute concerto is performed by the soloist it was composed for, Sharon Bezaly. This is the sixth disc on BIS dedicated to the music of Sally Beamish, music which in reviews of previous recordings has been described as and ‘striking compositions [which] combine lyricism and drama with clarity of form’ (in Gramophone).

Reinecke's work is a musical re-telling of the well-known story of Undine, the water spirit who marries a knight, but is betrayed and takes her revenge on him. Frank Martin's virtuosic Ballade (1939) features an acrobatic flute cadenza, roaming melismas and irrepressible cascades, generating a compelling sense of drama. In 1945, while in exile during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, Martinu composed his Flute Sonata, in which the virtues of his distinct musical language are plain to hear - lyrical lines, a rhythmic drive which is both energetic and lively and an effective use of tone colour. Six years later the bird-lover Messiaen composed Le merle noir, constructed around the song of the blackbird, which he painstakingly noted down and then found the means to imitate on the flute. Poulenc's melodic Sonata, finally, has become a signature work for its composer: its lightness, transparency and sonic refinement have charmed audiences ever since the first performance.

The works that have been chosen for the present disc come from two distinct stages in Rouse’s career, with the Flute Concerto (soloist: Sharon Bezaly) and the Second Symphony sharing as starting-point their maker’s preoccupation with the subject of death during the early 1990s. They also have a compositional strategy in common: in both works a central slow movement acts like a pivot, changing the listener’s perception of the music that follows, but also precedes it. But if the mood created by the Flute Concerto, with influences from both Irish and Scottish folk music, may be described as resigned, Symphony No. 2 addresses its subject in a much more furious way.

“Anyone who has yet to encounter the playing of the astonishing young flautist Sharon Bezaly should do so without delay. She makes a sensational sound, can play anything from Bach to contemporary…” Classic FM Magazine

Together with the Taipei Chinese Orchestra and composer-conductor Chung Yiu-Kwong, Sharon Bezaly explores the sonic possibilities of the combination of Western flute and traditional Chinese instruments such as the erhu, guzheng, yangqin and zhongruan. Transverse (side-blown) flutes (typically made of bamboo) have long been important in Chinese music for more than 2000 years.

The sparkling music on this disc includes two newly composed works by Chung Yiu-Kwong, both dedicated to Bezaly, as well as a the arrangement of Ma Shui-Long’s concerto for bamboo flute and symphony orchestra into a concerto for piccolo and Chinese orchestra.

Of the remaining three shorter works, The Thivats of Autumn is an arrangement for chamber ensemble of a traditional Chinese classical tune for pipa, depicting the sadness experienced by Wang Zhaojun, one of ‘The Four Beauties’ of ancient China, as she is forced to by the Emperor Yuan (48-33 BC) to marry a foreign ruler and leave her country.

Sharon Bezaly here performs with the eminent Australian Chamber Orchestra and Richard Tognetti in a programme which takes its name from the Australian composer Carl Vine’s work for flute and orchestra.

Pitangus Sulphuratus from the Venzuelan composer Adina Izarra’s concerto – composed in 1987, but with a new cadenza written especially for Bezaly – depicts a yellow and brown bird found in the Caracas valley. Its call appears throughout the piece

The tango makes an almost dreamlike appearance in Flute Concerto with Tango, which José Serebrier has dedicated to Sharon Bezaly.

Impresiones de la Puna embodies the dream of an eighteen-year-old Alberto Ginastera to find a truly Argentinean musical language.

BIS present a disc of works by the Japanese composer Mari Takano, composed between 2003 and 2009.

The four duos and trios that share the title LigAlien are all results of the idea of what would it be like to implant ‘alien’ music into one of Ligeti’s works.

Interspersing the four 'LigAliens' are two solo pieces, Jungibility for piano and Full Moon for violin and electronics, which also embrace a wealth of ideas both musical and otherwise from Duke Ellington, Omar Sosa and Stockhausen (Jungibility) and Björk, Pina Bausch and Miles Davis (Full Moon).

The closing Flute Concerto is the largest work on the disc. The present recording also appears on a previous BIS disc (BISCD1649), released in 2008, and the work was described by reviewers as 'a score which can move to a pop music beat without sinking into triviality or bombast' (in Gramophone).

Flautist Sharon Bezaly with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and Lan Shui here play the music of three composers who are all resident in the USA, but have their roots across the Pacific Ocean, in China. Philosophical, musical and literary aspects of this Chinese heritage are in evidence in the works recorded here.

Zhou Long has composed his Five Elements inspired by the traditional Chinese concept of the five ‘elemental energies’ (wu xing): metal, wood, water, fire and earth. For The Deep, Deep Sea, his shorter, single-movement work, Zhou Long found the title in a poem by the Chinese poet Li Bai (701–762 A.D.), exploring the metaphor of a sea voyage under difficult circumstances.

A later poet, Jiang Kui of the Song Dynasty, has provided Bright Sheng with the inspiration for the second movement of his two-movement work, Flute Moon, while the first movement, entitled Chi-Lin’s Dance, features the mythical Chinese unicorn. The closing work on the disc is Chen Yi’s The Golden Flute, a concerto in three movements, in which the stated aim of the composer has been ‘to let a Western flute speak in the language of Chinese wind instruments, such as the dizi made from bamboo and the xun made from clay.’

This disc brings together four contemporary flute concertos composed between 1980 and 2007 and performed by the internationally acclaimed flautist, Sharon Bezaly. Each work has been recorded with a different orchestra and conductor and all four works have been included on recent BIS releases.

This highly accessible, colourful and melodic music is here interpreted by the Tapiola Sinfonietta under Jean-Jacques Kantorow, a team whose previous recordings on BIS have been enthusiastically received by the reviewers. A disc of works by Saint-Saëns was for instance described as ‘a smorgasbord of distinctive orchestral colours’ in Classic FM Magazine and was a finalist in the Gramophone Awards 2007.