Sara Hahn: I Close My Eyes in Order to See
Navona Records

Canadian flutist Sara Hahn's I Close My Eyes in Order to See is an immensely satisfying recording, but it's enhanced significantly by the concept she chose to orient its selections around, specifically music's capacity for healing. The theme provides a firm connective tissue for the recording's eight selections and lends the result a strong sense of cohesiveness. The concept wasn't randomly chosen either: the title piece was written by Canadian composer Arthur Bachmann to commemorate a successful battle with cancer waged by Hahn's mother in 2006. Those stages of healing, including the familiar ones of fear, bargaining, and anger, thus take on added resonance in light of that personal dimension, and the release consequently assumes an emotional gravitas that strengthens its impact, too.

The trajectory of the recording's contents parallels that of an individual wrestling with a life-threatening diagnosis, which in the cases of Hahn's mother and the recording culminate in acceptance and optimism. Of course, all that being said, the hour-long release would still hold up excellently on purely musical grounds were the listener deprived of any such background detail, Hahn's virtuosic flute playing a constant marvel. She brings a distinguished CV to the release, recorded in December 2017 in Banff, Alberta. A University of Toronto graduate, she's been Principal Flute for the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra since 2006 and before that played in the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and performed with the National Youth Orchestra of Canada. Hahn's joined on the recording by pianist Laura Loewen, a professor of Collaborative Piano and the Vocal Coach at the University of Manitoba's Desautels Faculty of Music, and fellow flautist Sarah Gieck, who has served as the flute instructor for the University of Lethbridge since 2008 and performed with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra since 2009. (Loewen appears on five of the eight pieces, Gieck on two.)

Bachmann's three-part title work, its title derived from a quote by Paul Gauguin (“I shut my eyes in order to see”), opens the recording magnificently, Hahn's crystal-clear tone and exquisite vibrato and pitch control immediately evident. The dramatic mood swings experienced by someone newly informed of a cancer diagnosis are mirrored in the dramatic arcs of Hahn's playing and the intensity with which she and Loewen execute Bachmann's material. Still, as passionate as their playing often is, it's never lacking in nuance or refinement, as demonstrated perhaps most compellingly in the delicacy with which the melancholy third movement is expressed. Night Soliloquy, a 1936 composition by American composer Kent Kennan follows, its agitation redolent of anxiety and fear, the latter the first stage of grief and healing.

The recording's single solo performance sees Hahn commandingly exemplifying sadness in a short solo flute excerpt from Harry Somers' 1964 composition The Picasso Suite For Small Orchestra. In stark contrast to the excerpt's sombre tone is the spirited liveliness of the “Rondo Allegretto For Flute And Piano” from Henry Wolking's 1984 The Gate of Lodore. Though it's meant to symbolize bargaining, its high energy suggests recovery might well be possible. Arriving in the wake of André Jolivet's intense 1944 work Chant De Linos (anger), the purity and simplicity of Gabriel Fauré's 1898 piece Morceau De Concours (acceptance) are a balm, even if its three lyrical minutes pass more quickly than one might wish.

Two of the recording's standouts pair Hahn with Gieck, the combination of their respective flute and alto flutes on Bachman's The Curmudgeon and the Lark proving so magical, it's at first hard to associate the depression stage with the composer's other contribution to the release. Yet mixed in with joyful passages are ones marked by sadness, and eventually the piece comes to reflect the turbulent set of emotions one might experience during any one of the healing stages. Even more entrancing is Pathways, a flute duet written by Efraín Amaya in 2009 that's executed resplendently by the pair. Representing the optimism stage, the piece requires the flutists to shuttle back and forth between melody and accompaniment, a move that demands from them a deep rapport and also indirectly references how critical relationships are to the healing stages.

September 2018