Duration: c. 8'
DETAILS
COMMISSIONED by the Nestern Duo (Kathleen Nester and Wendy Stern)
WORLD PREMIERE by the commissioners, National Flute Association annual convention, August 2022.
AVAILABLE from your favorite sheet music dealer or direct from Presser.
RECORDING on Austrian Gramophon by Wendy Stern & Kathleen Nester alto flutes, Katie Leung piano
PROGRAM NOTES
In July 2020, the NeStern Duo (Kathleen Nester and Wendy Stern) commissioned a new piece for Two Alto Flutes and Piano, to follow up Sleepy Hollow for Two Bass Flutes and Piano which they had commissioned and premiered a few years earlier.
There was already a river-like flow of collaborations developing, as Sleepy Hollow had been commissioned immediately following Wendy's performance of Sonata (Spirit of the Hudson) for Bass Flute and Piano at a venue near her home -- only a mile from the Hudson River and right across the water from the legendary Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.
Thinking of an alto flute duo, especially in this context, I knew early on that the music had to somehow evoke or be inspired by swans. Swans have symbolized a broad variety of differing concepts throughout cultures and the creative arts. To me as a bass clarinet player and lover of low woodwinds, I see swans as large birds who are remarkably graceful and beautiful on a larger scale than other birds and waterfowl. How could swans possibly not be evocative of alto flutes?
UPDATES TO THE MUSIC
-Bars 156 & 157, delete the poco morendo and sub. a tempo
-Bar 222, add Poco più mosso
-Bar 259, in the Piano's RH add a high C (eighth note)on the downbeat as an upward continuation of the previous bar's flourish.
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