Recordings

Malena Kuss – Sonata para Flauta y Piano – In three movements: Allegro ma non troppo presto, Cantilena (Andante con malinconia), and Allegro vigoroso

Don Bailey, flute
Yujung Um, piano

From the composer: “The Sonata for Flute and Piano (1960), an unabashed exploration of post-tonal sonorities that betrays a youthful disregard for instrumental difficulty, marked the end of six years of private composition lessons with Ginastera, who taught me more musicology in his compositions classes than any of my [future] famous teachers, among them Schoenberg’s pupil Leonard Stein, theorist and composer George Perle, and the polymath Robert Stevenson. For a promising young pianist who eventually studied with Gyorgy Sandor and Rosina Lhévinne, Ginastera approached the teaching of composition as a history course, demanding that students hone their skills by writing in chronologically unfolding styles. … The extraordinary experience of studying composition as part of training as a performer was interrupted in 1960 when Gyorgy Sandor offered me a full scholarship to study piano with him at SMU. The piece is dedicated to Don Bailey, a brilliant flutist and dear friend who survived my music history courses at UNT with stoic perseverance.”

Hypnosis
Don Bailey, flute
Laura Logan Brandenburg, harp

Repertoire includes: Ibert’s Entr’acte, Beeftink’s Seasons (Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter), Godard’s Allegretto, Clarke’s Hypnosis, Debussy’s La Fille aux Cheveu de Lin, Larson’s Sweet Simplicity, Proust’s Prelude et Danse, Jongen’s Danse lente, Rutter’s Waltz, Faure’s Sicilienne, Beeftink’s Twilight, Hovhaness’s The Garden of Adonis, Marson’s Spring Blooms

We have the 7-movement Garden of Adonis by Alan Hovhaness and four Seasons by Herman Beeftink. The rest of the program is short pieces by Godard, Faure, Debussy, Jongen, Ibert, Proust, Rutter, Marson, Larson, and Clarke. Several of these were written for flute and piano, so this harpist has adapted them. Beeftink, a Dutch-American keyboard player and composer born in 1953, writes in a neo-Celtic style easy on the ears.…The 1994 `Hypnosis’ by English flutist-composer Ian Clarke (b 1964) serves as the title for the album.… The flute and harp sounds are overall very pleasant. Bailey plays with a well-centered tone and fluent technique.… (American Record Guide)

Available now on Amazon and on streaming platforms. To hear sample tracks click Hypnosis.

Don Bailey, flute
Donald Sulzen, piano

Repertoire includes: Poulenc’s Sonata, L. Boulanger’s Nocturne, Ravel’s Pièce en Forme de Habanera, Gieseking’s Sonatine, Martinu’s First Sonata, Hoover’s Kokopeli, and Muczynski’s Sonata.