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Flute and piano togetherApr 04, 2013 (The Fresno Bee - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- For followers of Fresno's chamber music scene -- and for the group Moment Musical in particular -- Alan Rea and Janette Erickson are enduring local celebrities. Over the years the pair have played duets many times together with Rea on piano and Erickson on flute. We caught up with both musicians via email to talk about the concert. Question: You'll be performing a little-played piece for flute and piano by Friedrich Kuhlau. Tell us about your radio experience that led you to this piece. It almost sounds like a bit of detective work. Erickson: Alan and I had searched over the years of collaboration to find some worthwhile pieces that treated the flute and piano as a duet team, rather than a flute solo with very little thematic interest in the piano part. We love the trade-off of each playing the interesting material. So, always looking for another piece, one day I turned on the radio KVPR (FM 89.3) and heard a wonderful piece. I called in to find out the name and opus number: Kuhlau Grande Sonata, Op. 83, No. 3. We could not find this piece. I even looked while at the National Flute Convention and its Dayton C. Miller Collection. No one had it. (Coincidentally, after we found the music, we later picked No. 2 after we played through the three Grande Sonatas a year later. We loved it the most!) You used the Petrucci Music Library to find the music. What can you tell us about it Rea: The music for the Kuhlau came from the Petrucci Music Library, a monumental online collection of 233,761 music scores by 7,722 different composers. Also known as the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP), it's named for Ottaviano Petrucci, who produced the first piece of printed (as opposed to hand-written) music in 1501. Numerous musicians and music librarians have uploaded onto this website every piece of public-domain music in the standard literature and, more interestingly, countless other less-known items, many of them unavailable anyplace else. One can download, free of charge, anything on this site. Being an older musician who has played much of the standard repertoire already, I have often used this resource to get materials for little-known but worthwhile pieces to play. How many years have each of you played with Moment Musical Do you recall the first piece for flute and piano you played together Erickson: Alan and I first did a flute/piano recital in 1989, I believe. We played the Dutilleux Sonatine, an extremely difficult piece written in 1943 for the annual Paris Conservatory playing competitions. We also picked a Telemann Trio Sonate, and I invited my friends Rachel Aldrich, oboist, and Linda Hamilton, bassist, to join us. It was the beginning of a great collaboration and the start of Moment Musical. It was my idea to found the group, and Rachel named it very cleverly. Our core group has grown in size to include a woodwind quintet, a string quintet, soprano, 2 pianists, a trumpeter and a harpist. We have also included harpsichord, percussion and other winds and string players as needed for certain pieces. Tell us a little about the rest of Sunday's program. Rea: The most unusual item on the program is a sextet for harp, piano, clarinet, bassoon, horn and contrabass by Ferdinand Ries (1784-1838). It's probably safe to say that this is the only piece ever written for this combination and he pulls it off brilliantly. The piano and harp have the lion's share of the playing and the work abounds in beautifully melodic and virtuoso display. Also on the program is the Schubert song "Death and the Maiden," sung by Barbara Vlymen, followed by the second movement of Schubert's String Quartet. ------ CONCERT PREVIEW Moment Musical's Sunday Serenade, 3 p.m. Sunday, April 7, Westminster Presbyterian Church, 50 E. Santa Ave. (559) 432-2473. $10, $20 family of 3 or more. MORE ONLINE For an extended interview with Alan Rea and Janette Erickson, go to fresnobeehive.com. The reporter can be reached at [email protected], (559)441-6373 and @donaldbeearts on Twitter. ___ (c)2013 The Fresno Bee (Fresno, Calif.) Visit The Fresno Bee (Fresno, Calif.) at www.fresnobee.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |