Apart from his own original works Böhm transcribed many famous works of celebrated composers, including Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Gluck. These versions of popular vocal or instrumental pieces were an eloquent way of proving that his “new flute” could perform works that posed audacious challenges, without any expressive limitations.
Artists: Gian-Luca Petrucci (flute), Paola Pisa (piano) & Hochschulesymphonieorchester München.
Tracklist:
00:00 Divertissement sur l’air “o cara memoria” de Carafa, Op. 6a
14:52 Studio No. 4 in G Minor from 24 Etudes, Op. 37
17:07 Aria che farò senza Euridice
21:06 Adagio from the Sonata, KV 332
25:48 Ständchen from Schwanengesang, D957 No. 4
29:56 Das Fischermädchen Song from Schwanengesang, D957
33:23 Rondò, KV 511
45:00 Aria tre giorni son che Nina
48:15 Aria [Cantabile] from the 3rd Orchestrasuite, BWV 1067
52:03 Andante con variazioni from the Serenade, Op. 25
THEOBALD BÖHM
Theobald Böhm, who was born in Munich on 9 April 1794, was among the most accomplished German flautists of his age and was a composer and an ingenious inventor who perfected the construction of the flute.
Over and above his commitment to scientific and organological research, Böhm pursued activities as a composer for his instrument and continued to make transcriptions of celebrated works by the Classical and Romantic masters right up until his death on 25 November 1881. In both his pieces based on original themes and the series of variations on melodies drawn either from popular operas or from well-known popular tunes, the stylistic techniques distinguishing his compositions were fully in line with the fashions of his day. Of a very different nature, on the other hand, is the sophistication displayed in his search for an elevated and musically complex idiomatic language for the flute in his transcriptions of works by the great composers, including Christoph Willibald Gluck, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the two near-contemporaries Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert.
The decision to make transcribed versions of celebrated vocal or instrumental pieces was an eloquent way of stressing that the ‘new flute’ Böhm had invented could perform works that posed audacious challenges, without any expressive awkwardness. Indeed, the formulas chosen by Böhm to arrange, vary and adapt these celebrated melodies to the flute can be counted among the most original, and inmany respects unique, achievements of the age.
What emerges, therefore, is a sort of catalogue of the expressive possibilities of the ‘new flute’ and an invitation to explore the quality of sound, an aspect which he considered to be his ‘primary interest as an artist.
Delìrivm Còrdia 