Emmanuel Pahud

Emmanuel Pahud – Solo (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 02:26:50 minutes | 1,34 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics

Interweaving the Baroque era and the 20th and 21st centuries, the newest addition to Emmanuel Pahud’s Warner Classics catalogue is an imaginative 2-CD collection of music for unaccompanied flute. Among the composers are Telemann, Nielsen, Honegger, Varèse, Berio, Takemitsu, Pärt, Pintscher and Widmann. “Most of the pieces are about exploring new paths,” says Pahud. “The power of this music often lies in the contrast between a simple line and the most refined complexities, between a note so quiet as to be barely perceptible and the loudest, most extreme notes playable on the instrument.”

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Emmanuel Pahud – Revolution – Flute Concertos by Devienne, Gianella, Gluck & Pleyel (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:13:10 minutes | 1,33 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics

Flutist Emmanuel Pahud has a knack for bringing the 18th century alive, and with this quartet of flute concertos he attempts to follow up his successful earlier release The Flute King, which included flute concertos from the orbit of Prussia’s King Frederick the Great. Even allowing for the fact that musical-social correspondences aren’t always as easy to detect as when Beethoven dedicated his Symphony No. 3 to Napoleon and then retracted the dedication, this program is a bit more diffuse in its concept than the last one. Only two of the concertos, by Devienne and Gianella, actually date from the revolutionary period, and none of the four shows much impact of the big operatic style of Spontini that influenced Beethoven and other composers. Pahud in a note sets out the Flute Concerto in G major by (probably) Gluck as a representative of the ancien régime, but if anything with its sensuous slow movement it seems strikingly modern. None of this is to say that the individual pieces, all (even the disputed Gluck work) pretty much unknown, aren’t a lot of fun. Jean-Pierre Rampal used to play several of these works in concert, and Pahud seems to have set his mind on being Rampal’s successor. That’s a worthy aim, and with the confident virtuosity and fine breath control in big lines he seems well on his way to achieving the goal. Check out especially the Flute Concerto No. 7 in E minor by François Devienne, known in his time as the French Mozart; the lively, alert accompaniment by the Kammerorchester Basel under Giovanni Antonini is a major enhancement to Pahud’s work here. A worthwhile flute release reminiscent of the Rampal classics.

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Emmanuel Pahud – Mozart & Flute in Paris (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:02:51 minutes | 2,23 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics

Two CDs. Mozart & Flute in Paris brings together nine captivating works, all with their origins in Paris, which feature a solo flute. Emmanuel Pahud is joined by his colleagues from ‘wind supergroup’ Les Vents Francais – oboist Francois Leleux (here also conducting the Orchestre de chambre de Paris), clarinettist Paul Meyer, bassoonist Gilbert Audin and horn-player Radovan Vlatkovic – and by Belgian harpist Anneleen Lenaerts. “The pieces on this album represent different golden ages of the flute,” says Pahud. The earliest, dating from 1778 are two concertante works that Mozart wrote while visiting Paris. The newest, premiered in 2014 by Pahud and the Orchestre de chambre de Paris, is Dreamtime by Philippe Hersant. The intervening period is represented by pieces by Saint-Sa”ens, Faur’e, Chaminade and Poulenc, composers whose music embodies France’s special relationship with the flute.

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Emmanuel Pahud – Beethoven: Works for Flute (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:17:34 minutes | 1,43 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics

Warner Classics’ final release for Beethoven’s 250th anniversary year is a charming programme of chamber music with flute. The four works, all dating from the earlier years of the composer’s career, were recorded in June 2020 in Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal by a distinguished group of musicians led by Daniel Barenboim, here in his role as pianist, and flautist Emmanuel Pahud.

Joining them are two of Pahud’s colleagues from the Berliner Philharmoniker, the orchestra’s First Concertmaster Daishin Kashimoto and its Principal Viola, Amihai Grosz, and two players with links to the Wiener Philharmoniker, its Principal Bassoon Sophie Dervaux, and Silvia Careddu, formerly its Principal Flute.

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