Kathryn Thomas

Faure & His Circle - Flute Music

Amazon.co.uk official review - Like many French composers of his generation, Philippe Gaubert (1879-1941) combined a successful career as composer/conductor of opera and ballet, with a regular output of instrumental pieces. Written between 1917 and 1933, all three flute sonatas abound in imaginative touches that enhance their technical fluency and three movement format. The first sonata, dedicated to the memory of his teacher Paul Taffanel, is the most classical in form and emotional range; a restraint offset by the frequent virtuosity of its successor, written for the legandary Marcel Moyse, and the rhapsodic vein of the third sonata, composed for Jean Boulze. While there's all the expected charm and lightness you associate with this medium, there's a nostalgia, even melancholy that are Gaubert's alone. It's these qualities that Kathryn Thomas brings out in her performances, recorded with a forward balance that rightly emphasises emotion as much as elegance. Richard Shaw is a thoughtful accompanist, and cellist Phoebe Scott joins in for the final two pieces, including the Pièce Romantique--ravishing music alone worth the price of the disc. --Richard Whitehouse

Amazon official review - Compiling a disc devoted to music for wind quintet can be no easy matter, but the Galliard Ensemble has done so with aplomb. The group is helped by the varied output for the medium written by Paul Patterson, whose three pieces cover his whole career--from the Bartókian rhythms and abrasive harmonies of his 1967 Quintet, through the Malcolm Arnold-like humour and inventiveness of Comedy for Five Winds (1972), to the entertainingly diverse Westerly Winds, written for the Galliards. The quintet meets the varied challenges of the works head on, and demonstrates a commitment to new music in two prizewinners from its Wind Quintet Composition Competition. James Olsen was only 16 when he wrote Imbroglio (1998), though you'd never > guess so from its engaging personality and formal ingenuity. Luis Tinoco's Autumn Wind (1997) is music of darker emotions and strong atmosphere--clearly a composer to listen out for. Then there's Holst's Wind Quintet--a delightful, witty piece which, like so much of his pre-Planets music, has only recently been revived. Superb sound, a model of clarity in this difficult-to-record medium, enhances a very desirable release. --Richard Whitehouse

Music for wind quintet by Paul Taffanel, Gabriel Pierne, Eugene Bozza, Darius Milhaud, Jean Francaix.

Music for wind quintet by Carl Nielsen, Gyorgy Ligeti, Samuel Barber

Kathryn Thomas and Richard Shaw perform the pieces from the ABRSM flute grade 7 syllabus. Also includes accompaniment only tracks.