While I can’t claim to have heard every recording of JS Bach’s works
for solo flute and harpsichord in the catalogue, I’ve listened to quite a
few. Brothers Marc and Pierre Hantaï’s is the best I’ve come across.
This is of course a highly subjective statement. Well, yes and
no. Favourites – such as those by Lisa Beznosiuk, Rachel Brown, Ashley
Solomon, Emmanuel Pahud (on modern flute) and Hantaï’s master himself,
Barthold Kuijken – exhibit a level of technical accomplishment and
interpretative insight that is perfectly susceptible to critical
analysis. What separates this recording from those is the extent to
which the brothers embrace the music’s rhetoric while sounding less
learnt than natural. Which is, you might counter, simply another very
sophisticated use of oratory. Whatever. Start listening and you won’t be
able to stop.
To focus on Marc for a moment and the odd man out, the Solo (Partita)
for unaccompanied flute: the antique dances sway between speech and
song, the articulation, the rhythmic and tonal shadings adumbrating
harmonic progressions with absolute fluency. To bring Pierre into the
picture, right from the opening Adagio of the E major Sonata there is a sense of luxuriant, almost divine peace and tranquillity which one finds again in the Largo
of the B minor Sonata. It’s as much to do with the sensitivity of
breath and touch as it is to do with the authentic instrument’s natural
sonorities. Elsewhere, it is a lithe, détaché approach and
tasteful ornamentation which so gently animates the faster movements. In
short, this is playing of the greatest subtlety and discernment. (William Yeoman / Gramophone)
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