Suite for flute and piano Op.34 (1884-1898)

For most of us Widor means organ music. Since he was organist at St Sulpice in Paris for as long as 64 years and composer of as many as ten organ symphonies (the fifth of which includes the famous Toccata) the perception is clearly not ill-founded. He was a rather more wordly personality than the organist image suggests, however. He had ambitions in the opera house and, at least in the first half of his career, he was a familiar figure in the fashionable salons of Paris, for which he wrote a wide variety of songs, piano pieces and chamber music.

A salon inspiration par excellence, the Suite for flute and piano was apparently first performed by Paul Taffanel in 1884, although it wasn’t actually published until fourteen years later, presumably after some revision. Whatever its history, it is a finely crafted score and most resourcefully written for Taffanel who, as the founder of the modern French school of flute playing, developed the underestimated expressive potential of the instrument. Widor’s Suite is certainly not lacking in virtuoso interest, least of all in the restlessly mobile outer sections of the Scherzo and its volatile ending. But the distinction of the work is in the lyrical quality of both main themes of the first movement, the Schumannesque melodiousness of a Romance coloured by the confiding voice of the flute’s lowest octave, and the way the cadenzas are integrated into the development - with particularly dramatic effect in the turbulent Finale.