Kapustin / Davis / Jarka - Complete Chamber Works for Flute - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Francisco Goya's paintings have left a powerful imprint on the European imagination. It was undoubtedly Granados who best translated into music, with nobility and humor, this colorful universe where majos and majas dance to love and death in the twilight glow of a dying Ancien Régime.

Robert Muczynski, born in 1929, has been sparsely represented on recordings since the early days of the LP. The 35 movements of various works on the disc average under two minutes each; he is obviously terse-he tosses an attractive idea out and then goes on to the next thing. His mid-20th-century idiom is consistently engaging, and he writes very well for winds. The brief Movements for Wind Quintet is gorgeous. Hawley plays strongly in every work (joined briefly by her former teacher Rampal in a work for duets), and the composer is still a very adept pianist.

Jacques Casterede's distinguished career was centered in Paris, but with musical roots in the early twentieth-century traditions of neo-Classicism and Les Six- the wide variety of scope and intent in his work was never meant to compete with the radical avant-garde. The balletic Flutes en vacances has become one of his most popular pieces, while Ciels ('Skies') was a competition piece for the Conservatoire. The colors in Trois moments musicaux d'apres Corot depict paintings in sound while the Sonatine de Mai is more neo-Classical in mood.