ANALOG vs DIGITAL - Ultra High Fidelity Magazine

Flute Sonatas of J. S. Bach
Baroni/Boerner/van Cornewal
M•A M087A
Gerard Rejskind: The flute underwent
a radical makeover in the late Classical
and early Romantic eras, which is
to say the span from Mozart’s birth
to Beethoven’s death. The flute at the
beginning of that period was what today
we call the recorder. That instrument
today is still used for period music, but
it is also a beginner’s instrument, often
supplied to schoolchildren (often in a
plastic version, alas). If you’ve played the
recorder, you’ll know that you had to be
careful not to blow into it too hard. If you
did it wouldn’t play louder — instead it
would go up an octave. You would really
feel you had mastered the recorder if you
could stop it squeaking like that.
The recorder had a long run, but
when music moved out of the salons of
nobles and the clergy and into increasingly
large concert halls attended by
the growing middle class, its inherent
squeakiness became a liability. The
recorder, unable to play loud enough,
eventually gave way to the modern flute,
the flûte traversière. It is made of metal,
sometimes silver. It has no mouthpiece.
Instead you blow across an opening (de
travers, or sideways), the way you can get
a sound by blowing across the neck of a
bottle. You can get a lot more volume
than you could hope for with a recorder.
70 ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine
Software Reviews
by Steve Bourke
and Gerard Rejskind
Baroque composers such as Bach
probably never saw a modern flute
(though it was invented in his lifetime,
and his son Carl Philip Emmanuel made
his career writing for it). Still, the idea of
blowing across a hole in the instrument
would not have been foreign to him.
Common though the recorder was, Bach
would also have written for the traverso,
which you will hear on this remarkable
recording.
As its name implies, the traverso,
sometimes called the Baroque flute, was
also played by blowing across it. Two
traversos are used in this recording of
Bach sonatas, and it is quite possible that
Bach wrote these works for just such an
instrument.
The traverso does not sound like
the recorder, but nor does it sound like
a modern flute. Notwithstanding the
claim that a flute’s material doesn’t affect
its sound (one flautist ordered up a flute
built of concrete in an attempt to prove
this point), you’ll probably find that the
two traversos heard on this recording
have a decidedly “woody” sound. Their
range is narrower than that of modern
flutes, which are equipped with keys.
Not a lot is known about the origins
of these pieces, which include two
sonatas, in E Minor and B Minor, a Trio
Sonata for two traversos and harpsichord,
and the A Minor Partita. These are difficult
pieces, possibly beyond the abilities
of the flautists Bach usually wrote for.
Though Bach himself was a master of
a number of the instruments he wrote
for, from the organ to the guitar, the
same wasn’t always true of the musicians
at whatever court he was working at.
Notably, the Brandenburg Concertos, a
gift to the margrave of Brandenburg-
Schwedt, were never played at the time,
almost certainly because the margrave’s
musicians could not have handled the
extraordinary complexity of the music.
No such problem arises here. Diana
Baroni has vast experience with both
Baroque music and the traditional music
of Latin America. She has strong mastery
of her instrument. So does Sarah
van Cornewal, the flutist who joins her
in the Trio Sonata. Dirk Boerner, who
accompanies on the harpsichord, is
excellent as well. They play with delightful
ease.
Todd Garfinkle made this recording
in Lyon, France, and he has left just
enough hall sound that we can detect a
brief echo at the end of a note, but not
enough to make the sound seem hollow.
Garfinkle records in DSD, the format
behind SACD, though his recordings,
so far, are to Red Book standard. What
he has delivered is second row sound in
a good hall. Warmly recommended.
Bach: Cantates
Milnes & Montréal Baroque
Atma SACD 2403
Steve Bourke: What has become of
Christmas? Where is the wonderful
holiday celebration of earlier times
that brought friends and family closer
together than ever. The stress of finding
the right gift yet again,and the
commercial season that seems to begin
earlier each year.
Atma Classique’s four disc series,
containing cantatas BWV 30, 7, 167,
130, 19, 149, 147, 82, 1, 61, 122, 123, 182,
offers us an escape to a very different
era, when each Sunday the people of
Johann Sebastian Bach’s community
enjoyed several of his cantatas during