Bridge's new Complete Mozart Flute & Orchestra album features the Odense Symphony Orchestra and their principal flautist, Rune Most, performing on a wooden flute. The recording, made in the acoustically superb Carl Nielsen Hall, includes the two flute concertos, the rondo, and perennial Mozart favorite, the Concerto for Flute and Harp. Rune Most began his studies at the Carl Nielsen Academy of Music in Odense with Karl Lewkovitch. Later came studies with Professor Lóránt Kovács in Budapest, and in 1990 he made his debut from the soloist class of the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, where he had studied with Toke Lund Christiansen. Today Rune Most is solo flautist with the Odense Symphony Orchestra and teaches at the Carl Nielsen Academy of Music in Odense. Over the years music has taken him to South America, China, Russia and many countries in Europe as a chamber musician and soloist. As a soloist and chamber musician he has recorded several albums of, among other things, Danish and South American music.

Shortlisted for the Gramophone Awards!

Following the success of their last album, Timelapse, this new album from Orchestra of the Swan is a collection of extraordinary works connected by ideas of pilgrimage, contemplation, exploration and enlightenment through the works of composers such as Richter, Respighi, Britten, Piazzolla, Brian Eno, Nico Muhly, Joy Division and more. As with Timelapse, the joy is to be found in discovering the surprising and delightful connections between culturally disparate and musically contrasting time periods. Labyrinths have been an important part of humanity’s cultural landscape for thousands of years; from the Ancient Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur to the intriguing stories of Jorge Luis Borges and Umberto Eco. Our overwhelming desire to find patterns and ‘the hidden truth’ is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the subversive and complex vistas of music. Formed in 1995, Orchestra of the Swan is a British chamber orchestra which, under the artistic direction of David Le Page, is passionate about audience inclusivity and blurring the lines between genres, through its adventurous and accessible programming.

Our first collaborative project with Klingekunst and the ensemble’s soloist and leader Sieglinde Größinger presents premiere recordings of the earliest Viennese flute concertos, which date from the reign of Empress Maria Theresa. The selected concertos by Georg Christoph Wagenseil, Giuseppe Bonno, Florian Leopold Gassmann, and Matthias Georg Monn, heard here on historical instruments, represent a significant contribution to the artistic recovery of the forgotten Viennese music culture of this epoch, a field that is only beginning to be researched. When Emperor Carl VI died in 1740, his successor Maria Theresa inherited a state budget burdened by heavy deficits. Forced to adopt economy measures, the new empress suspended the operation of the court orchestra and then offered its services to interested parties. However, the artistically marginalized musicians did not accept defeat when these unexpected developments put them in an existentially precarious position. No longer obliged to serve and obey a court aesthetic, they delighted in experimentation with new styles and forms of expression. The revolutionary character of these exciting times very much may be viewed as preparation for the Viennese classical period. Moreover, the flute now became a solo instrument for use in the orchestra and concert performances. Until about 1740 it was only rarely employed and then merely for additional tone color, but now it first enjoyed its share of spotlight.

Tatjana Ruhland has been described as »the Paganini of the flute.« At the very latest since her debut at New York’s Carnegie Hall she has numbered among the most prominent artists performing on the flute. On the present program she dedicates herself to Carl Reinecke’s chamber and concertante flute compositions, all of which he composed during the second half of his life. Along with the Undine Sonata op. 167 for flute and piano, today his most frequently performed work, the recording features the two concertante works written by him when he was over eighty years old. Here the initial dominance of stylistic elements associated with Mendelssohn has yielded to a tonal language that is both electrifying and highly individual. Reinecke’s music is diatonic in design but so strongly pervaded by semitones and suspensions that it also continues to flow. The »build-up phase« of the concertante last movements is only one of the procedures hardly invented by Reinecke but very much loved by him.

Joseph Schwantner is one of the most prominent American composers of our day. This new release features Looking Back, a commission in honor of flutist Sam Baron by his former students. Sarah Frisof showcases Schwantner's works with her vibrant and soulful playing. Frisof was the winner of both the National Flute Association Young Artist Competition and the Heida Hermanns International Woodwind Competition. Frisof considers herself a proponent of contemporary music and frequently premieres major works.

In the early 19th-century, a rivalry existed between two of Italy's greatest guitarists/composers, Francesco Molini and Ferdinando Carulli. This album features not only the complete Molino works for flute and guitar, but also the Carulli Concerto for Flute and Guitar. Both composers are wonderful, as are these performances. Diversity of styles is a hallmark of Roberto Alvarez’s concerts and recitals. As a matter of fact he feels just as comfortable performing classical, baroque or avant-garde music as well as Celtic, jazz or rock. He has received various international prizes, such as the Diploma of Honor in the Torneo Internazionale di Musica, Concurso Internacional de Música “Paper de Musica” de Capellades, the Ángel Muñíz Toca Award and the Ciutat de Manresa Prize. Born and raised in Singapore, Kevin Loh is a recipient of the Fellowship of the Royal Schools of Music, the 2018 Goh Soon Tioe Centenary Award and the 2010 HSBC Youth Excellence Award for Musical Excellence. He was talent-scouted by The Yehudi Menuhin School via his YouTube channel when he was only 12 years old and was awarded a grant by The Rolling Stones to study at the prestigious music school as their first Asian guitarist.

Written in his late teens: Flight, for solo flute, whose swooping crests and curlicues are fervently relished in Michael Cox's performance. Benjamin describes the piece as 'inspired by the sight of birds soaring and dipping over the peaks of the Swiss Alps'. Listening to the piece you'll hear a panoply of songs surfing the musical thermals in the alpine either: low, long-breathed cries and calls, filigree flocks of ornamentation in the atmospheric heights of the flute's register, a chorus of vapors conjured by a single instrument. Into The Little Hill is based on the Pied Piper story, allowing audiences an immediate entry point into the opera's dramaturgy. But Crimp's re-telling simultaneously updates the story, with its politicians, photographs, and limousines, and opens up further mythic dimensions to the narrative. The drama of Into the Little Hill is concisce, clear and simultaneously ambiguous, even chilling. Benjamin says, 'Martin's text is hard-edged, formal, and hyper-condensed'. The reason for its musical and dramatic success is Benjamin's unerring feeling for expressive characterisation. Each layer of Into the Little Hill's score is immediately identifiable, from the Crowd's baying cries of 'Kill them' rightat the start of the piece, to the rodentine scurrying of the rat's music, and the Mother's lamenting grief in the last scene. Dream of the Song is a mysteriously sensual and sensually strange song-cycle for countertenor, a halo of female voices that are similar in register, but so different in timbre and sound and expression, and orchestra. The counter-tenor sings poems, in English, by Jewish poets of 11th century Andalucia, themselves inspired by Arabic poetry of earlier centuries. There are images of ravishment and wonder here - moonlight, the celestial tent of the sky, a dream of a gazelle, a harp, a flute - but they are always undercut by other ideas. Above all, it's the gossamer rapier of Benjamin's music that cuts to the heart of these settings.

The Welsh flautist Emily Beynon plays a selection of British flute concertos, accompanied by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Bramwell Tovey. Beynon is the Principal Flute of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. Equally at home in front of the orchestra as in its midst, she has also performed as soloist with, amongst others, several BBC Orchestras, the Philharmonia Orchestra, NHK Symphony, and the Vienna, Prague, Netherlands and English Chamber orchestras.

Renowned for its luminosity and searing expressiveness, the music of Lithuanian composer P?teris Vasks frequently explores the relationship between nature and humanity, not least in the Flute Concerto written for Michael Faust, which is among the most expansive of Vasks’ orchestral works. Abstract qualities in the Sonata contrast with the deftly defined lyrical and rhythmic elements of Aria e danza, while Landscape with Birds exploits the entirety of the flute’s timbral range. Patrick Gallois and “the brilliant Michael Faust” (MusicWeb International) have also recorded the music of Mauricio Kagel (Naxos 8.572635).

Gary Schocker has composed some of the greatest works for flute of the past half-century. Included on this new release are his Sonatas for Flute and Piano Nos. 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 9, performed by Leslie Neighbor Stroud. Leslie Neighbor Stroud, flute, received her Bachelor’s degree in Flute Performance from the Peabody Conservatory of Music where she was a student of Britton Johnson (National Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra) and Timothy Day (San Francisco Symphony Orchestra). She has also studied with Lois Schaefer (Boston Symphony Orchestra), Walfrid Kujala (Chicago Symphony Orchestra) and Mark Sparks (St. Louis Symphony Orchestra) and baroque flute with Suzanne Stumpf (Musicians of the Old Post Road), as well as participating in the master classes of Gary Schocker, Julius Baker, Bonita Boyd and William Bennett. Leslie currently performs with the Pentangle Arts Orchestra, BarnArts Festival Orchestra, Pro Musica Vermont, Guilford Music Festival Orchestra, Cameo Baroque (a period instrument ensemble), Buttonwood Wind Quintet, the Richard Faith Ensemble, and the Sterling String Quartet. She has performed with New Bedford Symphony Orchestra, The Plymouth Philharmonic, New Bedford Festival Theater, the Tri-County Symphonic Band, the Buzzards Bay Musicfest, the Savannah Symphony Orchestra, the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra, the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, the Chicago Civic Orchestra, the Peabody Wind Quintet, the Bellemore Ensemble of Baltimore, the Mozart Festival of Alameda, and the Trinity Chamber Concerts of California.