Flute Concerto

Work on the Concerto for Flute began during Nielsen's trip to Germany and Italy in August 1926. The composer intended to present it to the public on October 21^st , but due to a severe stomach ailment he was forced to temporarily suspend work and at the premiere, held at the Gaveau Hall in Paris, the work was given a temporary finale. Nevertheless, the concert was a great success. The Orchestra of the Concert Society of the Paris Conservatoire played under the baton of Nielsen's son-in-law, Emile Telmani. In Nielsen's words, the night was "one of the greatest experiences of his life". The event was attended by Maurice Ravel and Arthur Honegger, who said that the Conservatoire's celebrated orchestra played magnificently and that the flute concerto was performed masterfully with exquisite tone. "There was applause and standing ovations, and the soloist Gilbert Espersen - a high-class flautist - was called on stage several times," according to Oneger. The complete version of the work was not performed until January 25^th, 1927 at the Music Society of Copenhagen. Nielsen's Concerto for Flute became part of the international repertoire. Unlike Nielsen's Violin Concerto, his Flute Concerto reflects the modernist tendencies of the 1920s and is devoid of tonal stability. Although it is generally in the neoclassical style, it has only two movements instead of three, as is customary in classical concerto form. The first movement, an 11-minute Allegro moderato, ranges from D minor to E flat minor and F major. The music impresses with solo passages, dialogues between solo flute and orchestra, and between clarinet and bassoon. After the unexpected interruption of the bass trombone, the flute comes to the fore with its cantabile theme in E major. The orchestral cadenza regains the original themes, then calmly ends in a tonality approaching solo flat major. Much of the content of this movement is reminiscent of chamber music performed by flute and various instruments. Nielsen described the beginning of the 7-minute second movement as "a bit of trouble with some of the notes sounded by the orchestra, but the atmosphere quickly settles down again, and when the solo flute enters, it does so with childlike innocence." The melodic opening of the movement oscillates between allegretto and adagio, then moves into a variation on Tempo di marcia and, after some playful glissandi in the bass trombone, the work ends.