Flute Concerto

Nielsen’s Flute Concerto was first performed in Paris in 1926, when the capital of France was still the capital of flute-playing. Flute connoisseurs brought up in the Taffanel-Moyse tradition - and the audience included composers as expert in this area as Honegger and Roussel - must have been amazed, or even alarmed, by what they heard. The last thing they expected in a concerto for an instrument as delicate as the flute was an aggressive orchestra and yet the first thing they heard was a strident orchestral introduction with prominent horns, trombone and timpani as well as apparently angry figuration on upper woodwind and strings.

But Nielsen, who liked an element of opposition in his music, knew his soloist, the Danish flautist Gilbert Jespersen, very well and had every confidence in his ability to hold his own. While it was not the composer’s intention to confront his friend with anything as devastating as the side-drum improvisation in the Fifth Symphony, he did have a bizarre trial of strength in mind for him.

In the meantime, however, the Allegro moderato proceeds on more or less conventional lines. Shortly after its pacifying first entry, the flute introduces a first subject consisting of two linked themes, one in busily chattering staccato and the other in a smoothly poised legato. The second subject, a more expressive inspiration beginning with four repeated notes, is presented by violins and oboes and taken up by the flute in counterpoint with a bassoon. If the following dialogue between flute and clarinet, with muted comments on violins, seems a little eccentric, it is nowhere near as grotesque as the challenge issued, after a fierce orchestral climax, by timpani and an outspoken trombone. Responding in its own petulant way, the flute survives not only to reintroduce the first subject but also to perform an elaborate and eloquent cadenza, with the timpani in support this time and the clarinet joining in another dialogue. The comparatively peaceful closing stages of the movement are devoted mainly to the second subject.

As the opening bars of the Allegretto suggest, however, the truculent tendency in the orchestra has not been tamed. The first bassoon proves to be a congenial companion to the flute as the solo instrument introduces the tuneful main theme and, indeed, there is no serious opposition here until the surprisingly noisy end of the lyrical Adagio episode that occupies the centre of the movement. In the Tempo di marcia, which is based on a variant of the Allegretto theme, it is not so much aggression that is directed at the flute as burlesque - not least from the trombone which, in spite of an apparently conciliatory gesture, retains its satirical attitude to the very end.

Gerald Larner©2002