Programme Note
The Flute Concerto was composed for flutist Alexa Still (Principal flute, NZSO) in 1993 while Ritchie was Composer-in-Residence with the Dunedin Sinfonia (now Southern Sinfonia). Unlike the Symphony “Boum” , written in the same year, this concerto is a generally happy and open-sounding work, and reflects aspects of Alexa Still’s personality as well as her playing. She first performed the concerto on September 4th, 1993 in The Glenroy Auditorium, and subsequently recorded it with The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.
The slow second movement is lyrical and improvisational in style, with two cadenzas at the start of the movement. The first of these was scored for bass clarinet, but becomes a flute solo in the version for piano and flute. In between these cadenzas a warm and gentle theme appears. However, it soon fades into anxious repeated chords on the piano while the flute plays nervous, flickering gestures. As the tension dissolves the piano introduces a laconic theme, interspersed with little cadenzas on the flute. The music builds to a climax where the warm, gentle theme returns in a contrapuntal version, and again fades into the anxious piano chords. A brief and mysterious coda contains references back to the opening cadenza, and the piece ends unresolved.
- Difficulty:
- Intermediate
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