"Fantasy for Flute, Piano & Chamber Orchestra"

I love the flute. It is an expressive instrument that is capable of a tremendously wide variety of nuance and character.

In writing this piece, a French 'bistro-esque' type of feel kept coming to the fore. Really, I tried to write it out of this piece - at one point I even had an accordion in the score. (Got rid of that one right away!)

In this, the "Fantasy for Flute, Piano & Chamber Orchestra," the role of the piano is more of a duo-solo instrument than mere accompaniment. It is a duet between the two solo instruments that starts the piece. (In fact, the piano starts the piece with a motivic series of sixteenth-notes resolving by a minor second. For those of you who don't read music - you may be better off!) The solo flute enters a few bars into this sixteenth-note pattern. The orchestra finally enters a few bars after that.

The feeling is definitely French. Funny how it doesn't starts out that way. (Sometimes a piece of music just ... happens.) Somewhere about the third hour of writing I gave up getting the "French" out and started to embrace it - weaving a more 'classical' feel (with the sixteenth-note figures of the piano), flute entry - then - flute, piano & chamber orchestra ("French").

This feeling now dictated the scoring of the "French" sections. I got rid of the accordion (more for humane reasons!) but shaped the strings and light winds to almost sound like an accordion.

In listening to the recording it comes off as a nice, friendly, light score that has some really lovely moments - at least I hope so!

My many thanks to Leesa Belton for her terrific flute work and the players who so eagerly came in so early! (Now that's friendship!)

This is the eighteenth piece in the series and I'm lovin' it! This one is for Nina at the Real Flute Project.

Tomorrow - a real 'knuckle-buster' of a piano etude. Later - a work for clarinet and sound effects played by my good friend Eddie.

Many thanks to Josephine Wall for the image "The Enchanted Flute."

Robert Ian Winstin

http://www.robertianwinstin.com/
http://www.numusicdirect.com/

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You can grab the FREE sheet music to most of the music in this blog series at www.numusicdirect.com/28intwentyeight.html