Lowell Liebermann | Works | Sonata for Flute and Piano Op.23

Sonata for Flute and Piano Op.23 (1987)

c. 13'30"

I. Lento (listen to sample)
II. Presto (listen to sample)

Commissioned by the Spoleto Festival

First Performance: 20 May, 1988; The Spoleto Festival; Charleston, South Carolina
Paula Robison, flute; Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano

Dedicated to Paula Robison

Best Newly Published Flute Work, National Flute Society, 1989.

Published by Theodore Presser Co. #114-40463

Reviews:
"Lowell Liebermann is one of America's hottest compositional talents and a formidable pianist as well. He makes mega-demands on his instrumental interpreters. This was made manifest by his recently composed Flute and Piano Sonata. Neither instrument was subservient nor did either player dominate the scene. The two-movement masterwork ran the gamut from intimacy to raw passion, from simple notes to Faustian demands. The second movement, a tour de force tanentella, stung listeners with its venom."

The Salt Lake Tribune

"The standing-room only audience gave the composer, who was present for the premiere, a tremendous ovation. The two-movement work is a tour de force for both pianist and flutist."

Charleston News and Courier

"Lowell Liebermann's recent (1988) Sonata is already becoming part of the standard flute repertory. It demands formidable virtuousity but repays both player and listener with it's first movement's ingenious unification of variety and the expressive urgency as well as the headlong energy of its finale."

Michael Oliver, Gramophone

"...a breathtaking new Sonata by Lowell Liebermann. Don't miss this one."

Classical Pulse!

"The Sonata is beautifully constructed and imaginatively written, and it has been taken up by many fine flautists."

John W. Lambert, The Spectator Online

"Mr. Liebermann has his own technique and doesn't sound like he's a slave to any style, cult or theory. His music has color, warmth, beauty and strength, and it manages to sound lovely without being vapid. It's worth hearing, and it's worth thinking about...This is a composer to be watched."

Charleston News and Courier

"...a work of amazing beauty that created a mini-sensation with the audience."

Post-Standard

"... commissioned by Spoleto for Miss Robison. The festival - and the audience- got its money's worth."

The State (Columbia, SC)

"... a multi-textured, beautifully crafted sonata."

San Antonio Light

"... a transparent, ingratiating, mordantly melodic piece that sported a keen sense of acoustic color. When flute and piano busied themselves covertly adding overtones to each other's timbres, it took on something of the aspect of black magic."

Boston Globe

"The Lowell Liebermann and Bohuslav Martinu sonatas are (deservedly) played and recorded so much these days that they've established themselves as classics in the modern flute-and-piano recital literature along with the works in the same genre by Poulenc, Dutilleux, Prokofieff, Hindemith Piston, and perhaps two or three more."

American Record Guide

"...a brilliant work in two parts. The work is modern, colorful, intense. Throughout, it hearkens 'The Rite of Spring' with the churning piano laying foundation for the soaring melodies of the flute. The first movement begins with an introspective melody that twice explodes dramatically into a rash of frenetic energy before recapitulating to the original theme at the end. The second movement is short and virtuosic - quickly becoming a staple of the flute literature. That status is certainly deserved, as it is simply a marvelous work.."1

Classical Music Web

"... an intelligent and beautiful work."

Jay Nordlinger, The New York Sun

"But the concert reached its climax with the performance of Lowell Liebermann's Sonata for Flute and Piano Op.23, a composition with enourmous changes in dynamics, a perpetuum mobile of a most fervent character. The extraordinary musical event met with great approval of the audience."

Alfred Rütz, Ostschwyzer Tagblatt