Sonora Slocum: Mozart Flute Quartets
Acis

The photo adorning the cover of Sonora Slocum's latest album shows the flutist wearing a resplendent emerald green gown and regally perched on the steps of the spiral staircase at the Bradley Symphony Center. An image connoting ascension is apt for a musician who was appointed principal flute of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra at twenty-two and whose career has steadily risen in the ten years since. A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and Manhattan School of Music, Slocum has three releases to her name, an EP of Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 2 in B Minor, an album of duets with pianist John Wilson called Return, and this new set recorded with members of the Dover and Escher String Quartets. In addition to the MSO, Slocum has performed with a number of US orchestras, including those in Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York, and has performed and toured with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.

Whereas Return features pieces by Barber, Copland, Debussy, and others, the latest is exclusively Mozart, and the choice dovetails splendidly with her sound. Compositions of such clarity and elegance prove to be a terrific vehicle for a flutist whose sound is likewise distinguished by resonance and clarity and whose vibrato the American Record Guide has astutely described as “delightfully relaxed.” The purity of her tone and assuredness of her attack make listening to Mozart Flute Quartets a pleasure. Dover members violinist Joel Link, violist Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, and Escher cellist Brook Speltz show themselves to be excellent partners to Slocum, with the flutist adopting the lead role the first violin assumes in the standard string quartet. Being the culmination of an idea the four had when they were students at Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, the album project holds a special place in their hearts.

Mozart apparently had misgivings about writing for the flute, but you'd never know it from the four pieces presented. The opening “Allegro” of the three-movement Quartet for Flute, Violin, Viola and Violoncello No. 1 in D Major, K. 285 (1777) tickles the ear instantly with its woodwind-and-strings combination. Virtuosic flute displays blend sweetly with energized accompaniment during interactions between the instruments, and the precision of execution and intonation makes for a rousing start. A serene “Adagio” follows, with Slocum's gracefully floating, vocal-like melodies supported by pizzicato accompaniment from the strings. Without pause, the joyful “Allegretto” caps the work with agile playing from all concerned.

The two-movement Quartet for Flute, Violin, Viola and Violoncello No. 2 in G Major, K. 285a Mozart wrote shortly after the first follows a lovely, lyrically expressive “Andante” with a rather more spirited “Tempo Di Menuetto.” Animated by an insistent rhythmic thrust in its opening “Allegro,” the Quartet for Flute, Violin, Viola and Violoncello No. 3 in C Major, Anh. 171 feels like a natural extension of the two preceding it, though some scholarly debate exists over whether it was composed in 1778 or three years later. Though the quartet is also a two-part work, the “Andantino” allows the listener to luxuriate in Mozart's artful writing and the musicians' sensitive rendering thereof for a full eleven minutes. It also dedicates a generous share of the writing to the strings and features Link in a lead capacity more prominently than elsewhere. The final work, Quartet for Flute, Violin, Viola and Violoncello No. 4 in A Major, K. 298, initiates its three parts with a theme-and-variations-styled “Andante” that sees the first variation voiced by the flutist and the subsequent three highlighting each string musician in turn as they elaborate on the originating melody. For the sprightly “Menuetto,” Mozart borrowed a melody from an old French rondeau and did the same for the concluding movement in basing it on a theme from an arietta by the Italian composer Giovanni Paisiello.

February 2022