Taipei’s National Concert Hall seems a large venue for a flute recital by a local flautist. But Hu Chih-wei (胡志瑋), who takes the stage there on Thursday, is a highly acclaimed musician, and New Aspect, which is presenting him in its current “Rising Stars” series, may succeed in selling a significant number of tickets for the event.
Hu, who was born in 1982, studied music mostly in France. His technique has been described as polished, elegant, faultless and beautiful, and if he doesn’t take risks it may be because he doesn’t need to, simply because his playing is already so talented and so skillful.
The flute hasn’t always had a wide repertoire as a solo instrument, and even Bach’s works for it were long neglected. But a bizarre variety of composers have penned flute items from time to time, and others have had their works for violin, for instance, adapted for the flute. Hu’s program can be viewed as a grand tour through the checkered history of writing for the instrument.
He begins with a sonata, which should ideally be accompanied on a harpsichord, by the French baroque composer Jean-Marie Leclair (who died, stabbed in the back, in a poor Paris suburb in 1764). He then leaps forward to Charles-Marie Widor, another Frenchman who wrote for many more instruments than the organ for which he’s too often chiefly remembered. A piece by yet another Frenchman, Paul Taffanel, follows; Taffanel was very eminent in his day, and conducted the French premiere of Verdi’s Otello at the Paris Opera.
The second half of the concert is devoted to the 20th century, with even the 21st century represented by a work by the contemporary American flautist Gary Schocker. The main items here are by the Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu (who was also a celebrity TV chef and author of a detective novel) and Sergei Prokofiev, whose Sonata in D, Opus 94, ends the concert. This is unusual in having been written for the flute first and then adapted for the violin later — a reversal of the more usual procedure.
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