|
RECITAL REVIEW
Hélène Wickett Isabelle Chapuis October 26, 2006
|
Masterful Technique By David Bratman
Flutist Robert Stallman is in the San Jose area for a recital and two master classes. The second master class is this Wednesday afternoon at San Jose State University’s music school, and the recital was last Thursday evening at Le Petit Trianon in downtown San Jose. A fairly small but enthusiastic audience for the recital included a number of children, presumably flute students, who probably learned a bit about breath control, and about phrasing in slow passages, from this performance.
Stallman and his accompanist, Hélène Wickett, went at a pretty fast clip through a fair chunk of flute-and-piano repertoire, which included three full sonatas, one originally for the flute, and two that were transcribed.
The genuine flute sonata of the group made for the most effective performance. This was Paul Hindemith’s Sonata for Flute and Piano, written in 1936, the first of a long series of sonatas for various individual instruments with piano by the industrious composer. The Flute Sonata is about 15 minutes long, modern without being experimental, full of imitative passages, and enlivened with the occasional march. The plain, straightforward style that Stallman and Wickett brought to all the works was at its best here.
They also did well with Albert Roussel’s Joueurs de Flūte, a tiny suite depicting the characters of four mythic or fictional flutists. The work is Debussian in style, with languid slow movements and fluttery fast ones. But this performance avoided excesses and was thoroughly satisfying. For a showpiece, Stallman brought out Opera San José flutist Isabelle Chapuis to join him in, appropriately, an opera-inspired piece: the Rigoletto Fantasy for two flutes and piano, coauthored by the 19th century Austrian flute virtuoso brothers Franz and Karl Doppler. Like so many other potpourri works from that era, it just plows through its popular tunes in as jovial a manner as possible. Stallman and Chapuis played the Verdi arias together in harmony — or, Chapuis took the melody while Stallman weaved decorations around it. The virtuosity here caused the players no pain.
The two transcribed sonatas framed the program. Both are large four-movement pieces verging on a half-hour each. Neither was originally composed with a wind player’s breathing limitations in mind, so both were a bit taxing on the flutist. Stallman has made a specialty of arranging Classical-period piano sonatas for flute, and at this concert he premiered his latest such work, a flute-and-piano version of Schubert’s early piano sonata in E-flat, D. 568. This is a restrained, classical sonata, well-suited for such reworking. Schubert repeats many of his passages with slight variation. Stallman’s arrangement exploited this by giving the first run-through to the piano and having the flute come in to double the piano’s theme or take over an arpeggio on the repeat. It gave him plenty of opportunity to rest over the long haul. The work is quiet and lyrical, and it gave Stallman a chance to demonstrate his fine sense of line. Tone was a bit more difficult — Stallman sometimes has a fine way of following a long quiet phrase with a louder one, and if he could do this more consistently it would be a highlight of his performance. Unfortunately he sometimes overblew high notes, and low-lying passages tended to lack strength. The same problems reappeared in the final work, César Franck’s Sonata in A. Normally for violin and piano, this piece is often taken up by cellists, and in recent years also by flutists seeking a major Romantic-era sonata. Franck’s lyrical phrases are well-suited for the flute. The final movement’s famous imitative passages sound like precursors to Hindemith’s. But in other respects the violin nature keeps winning out, not with double stops (I think there’s only one in the entire work, elided nicely with an arpeggio), but with long, intense forte passages over thick piano writing. At the end of such a long concert, this big piece with its huge breath demands must have been exhausting. Throughout the work Stallman seemed fatigued and sometimes a bit careless. But if his technical display eroded, his breath control and the care given to his phrasing remained fine. Both the Franck and the Schubert were played as plainly and simply as the Hindemith, at quite fast tempi, with no rubato or other Romantic expressionism. This seems to be Wickett’s pianistic style, and it suits Stallman’s apparent goal of simple lyricism. For an encore, Chapuis returned and joined Stallman in an “Echo” for two unaccompanied flutes attributed (though not too confidently) to Joseph Haydn.
(David Bratman is a librarian who lives with his lawfully wedded soprano and a wall full of symphony recordings.)
|
Robert Stallman
