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Reviews

Classic FM Magazine

By Andrew Mellor (January 13 2011)

Music for flute and orchestra Katherine Bryan (fl), Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Paul Daniel
LINN RECORDS CKO 367

The Music
Lowell Liebermann's Flute Concerto was written in 1992 for James Galway. It's tonal, rich and colourful with a dash of Korngold's Hollywood and Shostakovich's Russia - though perhaps more of the former. Contained within is variance and complexity, not least in the tour-de-force finale, Nielsen's classic concerto and an orchestration of Poulenc's Flute Sonata complete the bill.

The Performance
Katherine Bryan became the RSNO's Principal Flute aged just 21 and her clarity of tone - unfettered by intrusive vibrato - easy virtuosity and dynamic sensitivity must have bagged her the job. She plays the Liebermann as if she's considered the direction and purpose of every phrase. Now and then you might crave a little more projection or go-for-broke emotion, but it's technically watertight. Accompanying, Bryan's own orchestra showcases its other talented woodwind players (including the 'other' flutes) and trademark tightness of ensemble. Linn's deep but sharply-focused sound is thrilling, and in the sonata by Poulenc both soloist and orchestra atmospherically release all the mystery associated with the flute.

The Verdict
Like Mozart, I'm not the flute's biggest fan, but this is a recording I'll be keeping: the Liebermann is an exciting discovery; the Poulenc has bags of atmosphere and the combination of Bryan's tone and Linn's engineering mean the Nielsen's a real contender, too.

Choice
It has to be Liebermann. Try his two Piano Concertos, played by Stephen Hough on Hyperion (CDA 66966).
 

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Gramophone

By Andrew Achenbach (January 01 2011)

A product of Chetham's School of Music and the Julliard School, finalist three years running in the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition and currently principal flute with the RSNO, Katherine Bryan certainly makes her mark in the likeable anthology for Linn on which she is backed by her colleagues under Paul Daniel's sensitive lead.

Lowell Liebermann's 1992 Concerto gets top billing on the sleeve. Fashioned for James Galway, it's an impeccably crafted and readily assimilable confection, though Liebermann's chosen idiom can tend towards the worryingly sentimental and derivative (the opening Moderato in particular shamelessly apes Prokofiev). Suffice to say, Bryan revels in the music's mix of long-breathed lyricism and devel-may-care acrobatics (the rollercoaster Presto finale is chock-full of pyrotechnical wizardry). She's also a delectably poised exponent of Poulenc's ravishing Sonata (heard in Lennox Berkeley's perfectly judged orchestration, instigated and premiered by Galway in 1977), which is preceded here by the Fantaisie by Versailles-born Georges Hüe (1858-1948), a most beguiling discovery written for the Paris Conservatoire's 1913 concours and dedicated to that institution's professor of flute, Adolphe Hennebains.

Nielsen's enchanting Concerto brings up the rear, a piece that Bryan has lived with for some years now and to which she brings plenty of fantasy, delicacy and (in the work's boisterous dialogue with the trombone) playfulness. With Daniel and the RSNO lending committed and characterful support, it's a sterling display, albeit without quite eclipsing memories of dedicatee Holger Gilber-Jespersen's 1954 world-premiere recording with Thomas Jensen (which has just re-emerged on an unmissable all-Nielsen Australian Eloquence double-pack, with Jensen directing Symphonies Nos 1 and 5, as well as Ib Erikson in the Clarinet Concerto).

I need merely add that Bryan's lustrous tone manages to emerge unscathed within the far-from-accommodating acoustic of Glasgow's Henry Wood Hall, the timbre of the orchestra rather less so.

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