There's a new recording of Bach's four sonatas for flute and obbligato keyboard, played by Joshua Smith and Jory Vinikour. Extracts and chat:
More here:
http://www.soloflute.com/recordings.html
Joshua Smith uses a Folkers and Powell wooden head-joint and what looks like an old Rudall Carte Boehme system flute (plenty of pleasing key-clack). Vibrato's kept in check - deployed as an ornament not as a constant feature - and an equal partnership imposed by the two instruments.
It's very fine playing and a sign of how far the HIP movement's come: instruments and technique used to illuminate the music, rather than poor old Bach being assaulted by the latest flute fashion and performers' ego (on the one hand) or rendered 'musically correct' by dry-as-dust HIP scholars (on the other).
They're problem pieces: the B minor - possibly the greatest sonata in the flute repertoire - has a strange, massive, meandering first movement (without any tunes!) the A major's missing a few pages of manuscript so has to be completed by a Bach scholar, while the Eb major and G minor are possibly not by JS Bach (maybe a son, supervised by the old boy).
The solo Partita manages to extract chords from the flute which don't actually exist! The player constructs them afresh with each performance and, with the help of room acoustics, inserts them in the listener's ear.
Joshua Smith and Jory Vinikour should now get their act together and record the remaining figured bass sonatas with Jordi Savall. If they could rope in Rachel Podger for the great trio from the Musical Offering, the project would be complete.
Joshua Smith
Jory Vinikour
Joshua Smith & Jory Vinikour: Bach Flute Sonatas
Orwell said writing should be like a pane of glass and this is the musical equivalent. Just clean and honest. I love it.
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