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![[Picture of Fenwick Smith]](Images/baroque.jpg)
Click here to browse Recital Programs. Each program has a link to its own program notes.
I didn’t set out to play decades of annual Boston recitals. Starting in 1975, when I returned to Boston from West Berlin, I played recitals from time to time, including
a couple in consecutive years during the month of September. The Boston Symphony Orchestra was usually on vacation for most of September, and at the time, Boston’s concert
season didn’t really get under way until the BSO did. But in September, the schools and conservatories had reopened, and everyone was back from summer vacation.
My September recitals were well attended--and favorably reviewed. Before I knew it, the Boston critics were announcing "Fenwick Smith’s annual recital," and
declaring that it "opens Boston’s concert season."
This free promotion was too much to pass up. I was also encouraged to continue in the same vein by a fascinating booklet I found in a used-book store, entitled
"Commemorative Record of the One Hundred Concerts given by the Boston Flute Players’ Club 1921--1940." This organization, under the direction of BSO principal flute
Georges Laurent, presented four concerts annually, continuing into the 1940’s. Contrary to what one might infer from its name, the Club presented chamber-music concerts comparable
to those presented nowadays by the Boston Symphony Chamber Players or the Boston Chamber Music Society. Laurent appeared on every program, although he typically played only one or two
pieces. His programming was adventurous: Boston, American, and world premieres appeared regularly, sometimes several on a program. He was presenting baroque music with viola da gamba
and harpsichord in the 1920’s. And in one hundred programs only a very few standard pieces, such as the Beethoven Serenade, were repeated.
With this inspiring model in mind, I decided by the mid-1980’s not only to continue playing annual September recitals, but to do so without repeating repertoire. (If I had known
I was going to do this I would not, in 1983, have played an all-Bach recital--thereby using up all at once a big chunk of our finest music.) The repertoire for the flute, compared with
violin, piano, voice, or cello, is slim, and many flutists, tiring of our short list of chestnuts, are understandably tempted to borrow from the repertoire of others. While I have succumbed
to programming the Franck Sonata, I do wonder how strong the interest is among the concert-going public in hearing, say, the violin sonatas of Mozart, Brahms, or Fauré played on the flute.
So I confess to having an agenda: I believe the flute repertoire is broader and more interesting than many flutists give it credit for. Without borrowing from the repertoires of other instruments,
and drawing only sparingly from our own standard repertoire, I believe that flutists can come up with a wide range of successful recital programs, enjoyable by the general public. A recital
program, artfully assembled and arranged, can give lesser pieces greater impact than they have alone, and the whole can add up to much more than the sum of its parts. So if the following
programs inspire a few flutists to venture beyond Bach and Telemann, Schubert and Chaminade, Poulenc and Prokofiev, so much the better!
Click here to browse Recital Programs. Each program has a link to its own program notes.
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