Concerto for flute and strings

After the first performance of Jolivet’s Flute Concerto, in Paris in 1950 with Jean-Pierre Rampal as soloist, a leading critic noted with evident relief that “this is one of Jolivet’s works where violence gives way to tenderness and where force and passion yield to charm.” Certainly, in comparison with the music he was writing in his 30s – when, as a pupil of Edgard Varèse, he had acquired a daunting reputation – it is an eminently accessible score. It does not, however, set out to compete in terms of popularity with that earlier major landmark in the French flute repertoire, the hyper-active Concerto of Jacques Ibert. Scored for flute and strings only, Jolivet’s is a more intimate, perhaps more serious work with its own thoroughly distinctive harmonic and melodic style.

The opening Andante cantabile section, where the flute introduces and develops the shapely main theme of the work over an increasingly engaged string accompaniment, is particularly attractive. At the height of an impassioned climax, marked by a prolonged trill on the flute, the tempo changes to Allegro scherzando. This time the strings introduce the new material – a contrastingly lively, angular theme which proves to be well suited to flute treatment at all levels in its pitch range and in a variety of colouring, including brief instances of flutter-tongue. A short episode for flute with solo violins precedes an abbreviated recapitulation and an amusingly deft ending.

Although it is presented as a separate movement, the central Largo is little more than an introduction to the finale. Violins recall the opening theme of the work with some emotion and, by way of two short interventions from the soloist, lead the way into a sudden change of tempo to Allegro risoluto. Apparently taken by surprise, the flute scampers around at some length in search of new material and eventually finds not just one theme but two – the first bustling and characteristically angular, the other a more sustained melody which, after the second of two short cadenzas, supplies the climax of the work for flute and strings in unison.