Rouse: Flute Concerto (SACD review)

Also, Ibert: Concerto for Flute and Orchestra; Debussy: Syrinx; Martin: Ballade. Katherine Bryan, flute; Jac van Steen, Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Linn Records CKD 420.

There may be a few names here with which you’re unfamiliar. Let’s begin with Christopher Rouse (b. 1949). He’s a prominent American composer currently teaching at the Juilliard School, who has seen his music recorded by nearly a dozen record labels. Katherine Bryan is the Principal Flute of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and for the past decade or so has also been pursuing a successful solo career in the concert hall and on recordings. Jac van Steen (b. 1956) is a Dutch conductor who has been the Music Director of Het Nationale Ballet in Amsterdam, a faculty member at the Royal Conservatory of music and dance in The Hague, the Chief Conductor of the Nürnberger Symphoniker, the Music Director of the Neues Berliner Kammerorchester, the Music Director of Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar, the Chief Conductor of the Staatskapelle Weimar, the Chief Conductor of the Orchester Musikkollegium Winterthur, the Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and currently the General Music Director of the Dortmund Philharmonic Orchestra. As for Linn Records, you may know their high-end audio products, especially the famous Linn-Sondek turntables, more than you know their recordings, but I can assure you the recordings are every bit as good as their turntables, amps, preamps, speakers, and the like.

So, the present album comes with a prestigious pedigree.

Things begin with Rouse’s Flute Concerto (1993), which he wrote as the continuation of a series of pieces based on deaths that profoundly influenced him. The Concerto was Rouse’s response to the death of a two-year-old English boy murdered by two older boys. The Concerto is sweet and largely melodic, Rouse being something of a Romantic, and it’s written in an unusual (well, unusual for a concerto) five-movement arrangement. The work appears to have now become a part of the general flute repertoire, meaning that if you are a flutist (or flautist, if you prefer), you will probably perform and maybe record the piece at some point in your career.

Ms. Bryan is a flutist of the first order, her playing sensitive and flowing. She handles the Rouse Concerto in a like manner. The flute enters almost immediately, wistful and slightly melancholy, Ms. Bryan giving it an achingly beautiful turn. Interestingly, each of the five movements provides the listener with a different mood, so after the brief, slow introspection of the first movement, handled mostly by the flute, we get a stricter tone in the second movement, in which the orchestra plays a much bigger part. Still, Ms. Bryan's flute dances along within the proceedings at a fairly good clip, the music building to something of a frenzy, I assume representing the boy's death. The central and longest movement, marked Elegia, is a serious lament on the senseless killing. Again, we hear a warm, fluid voice from Ms. Bryan's flute as the melody takes flight and hovers for its few minutes' duration, as the whole thing builds to a huge climax before falling off into quiet. The fourth movement is a Scherzo, utilizing a number of percussive effects to punctuate the flute, and it serves to highlight Ms. Bryan's skillful playing talents. The final movement provides another slow, lyrical, spiritual note, much as the first movement had, but sounding more Celtic in its mood and phrasing.

Ms. Byran helps us understand why Rouse's Flute Concerto has entered the basic repertoire; it's sincere, direct, and moving. The composer says about the piece, "In a world of daily horrors too numerous and enormous to comprehend en masse, it seems that only isolated, individual tragedies serve to sensitise us to the potential harm man can do to his fellow. I followed this case closely during the time I was composing my concerto and was unable to shake the horror of these events from my mind."

The disc’s accompanying works are no less accomplished in Ms. Bryan's hands. The Concerto for Flute and Orchestra by Jacques Ibert (1890-1962) presents a contrast to the more-solemn Rouse piece. The Ibert is lighter, livelier, and more humorous, yet it offers Ms. Bryan an equal challenge in virtuosic demands. The album concludes with two short solo works, the first, Syrinx, by Claude Debussy (1862-1918) and the second, Ballade, by Frank Martin (1890-1974), both of which Ms. Bryan plays with a strong emotional fluency, always graceful and poignant. As with the entire program, they afford the flutist ample opportunity to show off her versatility to good effect.

Linn Records producer and engineer Phillip Hobbs recorded this hybrid two-channel stereo and multichannel SACD in October 2012 at Henry Wood Hall, Glasgow, UK. The sound in the two-channel SACD mode to which I listened is wonderfully airy, focused, and glowing, everything you'd expect from an audiophile recording. Ms. Bryan’s flute appears almost in the room with the listener, the orchestra realistically providing the needed support at an appropriately lifelike distance behind her. When the orchestra does come into its own, it does so with a commendable transparency, yet there is always a compensating ambient bloom from the hall that mitigates any possible hardness or harshness that the clarity could bring with it. The orchestral depth is good, the width (or spread) is natural for the moderate miking distance involved, and the dynamic range, frequency response, and transient impact are all exemplary.

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

JJP

Meet the Staff

Meet the Staff
John J. Puccio, Founder and Contributor

Understand, I'm just an everyday guy reacting to something I love. And I've been doing it for a very long time, my appreciation for classical music starting with the musical excerpts on the Big Jon and Sparkie radio show in the early Fifties and the purchase of my first recording, The 101 Strings Play the Classics, around 1956. In the late Sixties I began teaching high school English and Film Studies as well as becoming interested in hi-fi, my audio ambitions graduating me from a pair of AR-3 speakers to the Fulton J's recommended by The Stereophile's J. Gordon Holt. In the early Seventies, I began writing for a number of audio magazines, including Audio Excellence, Audio Forum, The Boston Audio Society Speaker, The American Record Guide, and from 1976 until 2008, The $ensible Sound, for which I served as Classical Music Editor.

Today, I'm retired from teaching and use a pair of bi-amped VMPS RM40s loudspeakers for my listening. In addition to writing for the Classical Candor blog, I served as the Movie Review Editor for the Web site Movie Metropolis (formerly DVDTown) from 1997-2013. Music and movies. Life couldn't be better.

Karl Nehring, Editor and Contributor

For more than 20 years I was the editor of The $ensible Sound magazine and a regular contributor to both its equipment and recordings review pages. I would not presume to present myself as some sort of expert on music, but I have a deep love for and appreciation of many types of music, "classical" especially, and have listened to thousands of recordings over the years, many of which still line the walls of my listening room (and occasionally spill onto the furniture and floor, much to the chagrin of my long-suffering wife). I have always taken the approach as a reviewer that what I am trying to do is simply to point out to readers that I have come across a recording that I have found of interest, a recording that I think they might appreciate my having pointed out to them. I suppose that sounds a bit simple-minded, but I know I appreciate reading reviews by others that do the same for me — point out recordings that they think I might enjoy.

For readers who might be wondering about what kind of system I am using to do my listening, I should probably point out that I do a LOT of music listening and employ a variety of means to do so in a variety of environments, as I would imagine many music lovers also do. Starting at the more grandiose end of the scale, the system in which I do my most serious listening comprises Marantz CD 6007 and Onkyo CD 7030 CD players, NAD C 658 streaming preamp/DAC, Legacy Audio PowerBloc2 amplifier, and a pair of Legacy Audio Focus SE loudspeakers. I occasionally do some listening through pair of Sennheiser 560S headphones. I miss the excellent ELS Studio sound system in our 2016 Acura RDX (now my wife's daily driver) on which I had ripped more than a hundred favorite CDs to the hard drive, so now when driving my 2022 Accord EX-L Hybrid I stream music from my phone through its adequate but not outstanding factory system. For more casual listening at home when I am not in my listening room, I often stream music through the phone into a Vizio soundbar system that has tolerably nice sound for such a diminutive physical presence. And finally, at the least grandiose end of the scale, I have an Ultimate Ears Wonderboom II Bluetooth speaker for those occasions where I am somewhere by myself without a sound system but in desperate need of a musical fix. I just can’t imagine life without music and I am humbly grateful for the technology that enables us to enjoy it in so many wonderful ways.

William (Bill) Heck, Webmaster and Contributor

Among my early childhood memories are those of listening to my mother playing records (some even 78 rpm ones!) of both classical music and jazz tunes. I suppose that her love of music was transmitted genetically, and my interest was sustained by years of playing in rock bands – until I realized that this was no way to make a living. The interest in classical music was rekindled in grad school when the university FM station serving as background music for studying happened to play the Brahms First Symphony. As the work came to an end, it struck me forcibly that this was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard, and from that point on, I never looked back. This revelation was to the detriment of my studies, as I subsequently spent way too much time simply listening, but music has remained a significant part of my life. These days, although I still can tell a trumpet from a bassoon and a quarter note from a treble clef, I have to admit that I remain a nonexpert. But I do love music in general and classical music in particular, and I enjoy sharing both information and opinions about it.

The audiophile bug bit about the same time that I returned to classical music. I’ve gone through plenty of equipment, brands from Audio Research to Yamaha, and the best of it has opened new audio insights. Along the way, I reviewed components, and occasionally recordings, for The $ensible Sound magazine. Most recently I’ve moved to my “ultimate system” consisting of a BlueSound Node streamer, an ancient Toshiba multi-format disk player serving as a CD transport, Legacy Wavelet II DAC/preamp/crossover, dual Legacy PowerBloc2 amps, and Legacy Signature SE speakers (biamped), all connected with decently made, no-frills cables. With the arrival of CD and higher resolution streaming, that is now the source for most of my listening.

Ryan Ross, Contributor

I started listening to and studying classical music in earnest nearly three decades ago. This interest grew naturally out of my training as a pianist. I am now a musicologist by profession, specializing in British and other symphonic music of the 19th and 20th centuries. My scholarly work has been published in major music journals, as well as in other outlets. Current research focuses include twentieth-century symphonic historiography, and the music of Jean Sibelius, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Malcolm Arnold.

I am honored to contribute writings to Classical Candor. In an age where the classical recording industry is being subjected to such profound pressures and changes, it is more important than ever for those of us steeped in this cultural tradition to continue to foster its love and exposure. I hope that my readers can find value, no matter how modest, in what I offer here.


Bryan Geyer, Technical Analyst

I initially embraced classical music in 1954 when I mistuned my car radio and heard the Heifetz recording of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. That inspired me to board the new "hi-fi" DIY bandwagon. In 1957 I joined one of the pioneer semiconductor makers and spent the next 32 years marketing transistors and microcircuits to military contractors. Home audio DIY projects remained a personal passion until 1989 when we created our own new photography equipment company. I later (2012) revived my interest in two channel audio when we "downsized" our life and determined that mini-monitors + paired subwoofers were a great way to mate fine music with the space constraints of condo living.

Visitors that view my technical papers on this site may wonder why they appear here, rather than on a site that features audio equipment reviews. My reason is that I tried the latter, and prefer to publish for people who actually want to listen to music; not to equipment. My focus is in describing what's technically beneficial to assure that the sound of the system will accurately replicate the source input signal (i. e. exhibit high accuracy) without inordinate cost and complexity. Conversely, most of the audiophiles of today strive to achieve sound that's euphonic, i.e. be personally satisfying. In essence, audiophiles seek sound that's consistent with their desire; the music is simply a test signal.

Mission Statement

It is the goal of Classical Candor to promote the enjoyment of classical music. Other forms of music come and go--minuets, waltzes, ragtime, blues, jazz, bebop, country-western, rock-'n'-roll, heavy metal, rap, and the rest--but classical music has been around for hundreds of years and will continue to be around for hundreds more. It's no accident that every major city in the world has one or more symphony orchestras.

When I was young, I heard it said that only intellectuals could appreciate classical music, that it required dedicated concentration to appreciate. Nonsense. I'm no intellectual, and I've always loved classical music. Anyone who's ever seen and enjoyed Disney's Fantasia or a Looney Tunes cartoon playing Rossini's William Tell Overture or Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 can attest to the power and joy of classical music, and that's just about everybody.

So, if Classical Candor can expand one's awareness of classical music and bring more joy to one's life, more power to it. It's done its job. --John J. Puccio

Contact Information

Readers with polite, courteous, helpful letters may send them to classicalcandor@gmail.com

Readers with impolite, discourteous, bitchy, whining, complaining, nasty, mean-spirited, unhelpful letters may send them to classicalcandor@recycle.bin.

"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa

"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa