Sonatine for flute and piano

Animé

A composer of immense integrity who is obsessive about being represented only by what is both thoroughly distinctive and perfectly finished, Dutilleux has disowned most of the music he wrote before the Piano Sonata of 1946. Happily, however, the Sonatine for flute and piano, which was commissioned as a competition piece by the Paris Conservatoire in 1943, not only survives but positively thrives. The composer regards it as “utilitaire,” which in a sense it is, but no work as melodious and as effectively written as this can be dismissed just because it serves a useful purpose. It cannot be dismissed either on the grounds that it is entirely unpresentative of the later Dutilleux. Even the echoes of other composers - Ravel on the very first entry of the flute, Debussy on the very last gesture of the piano, Roussel in between - find a reflection in the allusions he has made in his music since then, though quite deliberately in these cases, to Bartók and Britten among others.

More to the point, the Sonatine is an early example of Dutilleux’s characteristic avoidance of set forms. True, it is in the three movements characteristic of the sonatina and, in accordance with the requirements the Conservatoire, it contains a cadenza. But the events within the movements are in no way predictable. The opening Allegro actually anticipates the mature Dutilleux’s tendency to avoid revealing his thematic material in its definitive form from the start: the main theme appears first on the piano in octaves in vague outline and, although the flute joins the piano in clarifying it to some extent, it is only after an episode devoted to other matters that the theme is presented in full melodic shape on the flute over sympathetic harmonies on the piano.

Following directly on the delicately evanescent ending of the first movement, the Andante is a brief but passionately eloquently interlude before the impulsive Animé finale where rumbling piano rhythms mingle spontaneously with virtuoso flute figuration and high-flow lyricism. The work culminates in a solo cadenza that covers most of the range of the instrument from top to bottom and culminates in a brilliant little coda.