liezlaltwp01

FLUTE RECITAL
Liesl Stoltz and Albie van Schalkwyk (piano) play for the Cape Town Concert Series. In the Baxter concert hall.

It is not every day that a local lass has the talent, perseverance and opportunities to make a name for herself with art music. The young Cape flautist Liesl Stoltz is well on her way to achieving this – also in France where she now studies. We will follow her progress closely.

Her programme for Saturday evening in the Baxter, together with our country’s foremost accompanist, Albie van Schalkwyk, varied from Bach, Kuhlau and Prokofiev to the present-day French composer Henri Dutilleux and our own Stefans Grové. An adaptation of themes from Carmen by Francois Bornéy that ended the programme was clever and a spectacular virtuoso performance, but the thinnish tones of a flute can hardly reflect the passionate character of Carmen.

There were two unaccompanied works: Bach’s Partita in A minor and Grové’s Pan and the Nightingale. Bach’s demandingly long phrases often led to audible breathing, which did not disturb me but were described by a colleague as “gasping”. What is noteworthy is that this was never heard in the striking, although short (three minutes) work of Stefans Grové. The exceptional empathy in Grové’s writing for the flute is too strong for it. Stoltz’s deep musicality, stylish approach and great technical ability enabled her to provide interpretations of high quality throughout. A few high notes in fortissimo passages and intonations that sometimes verged on the questionable are aspects needing further attention.

Profundity: Kuhlau’s Grande Sonate Concertante opus 85 is ingenious and very melodious, but without much depth. Prokofiev’s masterly Sonata No. 2 in D major (better known in its version as a violin sonata) is just as melodious, but it has more heartfelt charm and profundity.

Here, and also in Dutilleux’s Sonatine, Albie van Schalkwyk’s outstanding piano playing was indispensable.

Pieter Kooij

MUSIC RECITAL:
Duo International de Paris: Liesl Stoltz (flute) and Kyoko Motono (piano).

Presented by the P.E. Music Society in collaboration with Alliance Française. In the Opera House. Some years ago we became acquainted here, at the annual music competition for high school learners, with Liesl Stoltz’s exceptional talent as a flautist.

After her time with Eva Tamassy in Stellenbosch, she studied under various grand masters such as Shigenori Kudo and Pierre-Ives Artaud in Paris, but also regularly in Italy under the world’s greatest, the Swiss Peter-Lukas Graf.

In the Opera House the audience could fully enjoy flute playing of the highest quality. Together with the Kyoko Motono of Japan, who has already established herself as a pianist in Paris, the two members of the duo gave a brilliant recital. The duo performs in every way on a high professional level, individually, but always as a unified ensemble. Only now and again in some of the pieces the sound balance swung slightly against the flute. However, with a tightly closed lid some of the important sonorities of the piano would have been lost. Three romances, opus 94 by Schumann, began the evening with great feeling, and already the rich tones flowed freely across the footlights, tones that Stoltz constantly draws magically and apparently effortlessly from her Muramatsu flute.

Beautifully balanced: The flute tone was firmly focused throughout the evening, without ever becoming strained. All the registers were perfectly balanced, the lower tones indeed exceptionally enviable.

She uses her vibrato purposefully as an ornament, never as a mere mannerism. Fauré’s Morceau de Concours is one of those gracious works for flute in which every sound comes warmly across, with a breath system and embouchure that play lovingly together, with accompaniment that reminds one of a serenely progressing basso continuo. In his Fantasy opus 79, tongue and fingers were in addition to this also willing slaves. Naturally, Paganini composed his unaccompanied Caprices for violin virtuosi fond of showing off, but many of these pieces lend themselves to performance on a flute. In the No. 4 opus 1 everything must necessarily be well integrated for it to sound like music, and it did.

Hard work: Dutilleux’s Sonatina (1945) is pure fun, if one can play it, but even with a flautistically acute and ready technique it demands a lot of hard work.

This was, however, no problem. The duo Stoltz-Motono played it stylishly with the greatest of ease. After the interval, adaptations of Debussy’s La fille aux cheveux de lin and the equally well known Clair de Lune were a wealth of sound. This was followed still more passionately and certainly pyrotechnically by Henri Busser’s Andalucia opus 86 with its extensive solo cadenza. The notes so brilliantly composed by Stefans Grové in “Pan and the Nightingale” (for unaccompanied flute) were transformed magnificently and with much fantasy into sound, and this more than fulfilled the composer’s wishes.

Choice of tempo exactly right: Then followed the Poulenc Sonata (1957), undoubtedly one of the most-loved French works composed in that century for flute and piano.

The two parts are integrated in an exceptionally inspired way, and the whole can be immediately appreciated by all. With the choice of tempo so exactly right (some performers choose a very hurried tempo), every moment was enjoyable. Stoltz has the necessary vitality to make her playing really come alive. Her accompanist kept pace very well.

Bizet’s Fantasie sur Carmen was an effectively dramatic and melodramatic ending, and after well-deserved applause, Intermezzo, also from Carmen was a suitable encore.

I am confident that Liesl Stoltz’s name in the world of flute playing will, with her growing repertoire and depth, become ever more widely known.

(Theo Boekkooi)

Pedro Rodrigues (guitar) and Liesl Stoltz (flute)
Musicality undisputed, listening pleasure undiluted.

Musicality undisputed, listening pleasure undiluted.

Undisputed musicality wrapped the substantial audience on Sunday evening in a comforting blanket of undiluted listening pleasure that kept the cold of winter out. Flute playing of the stature rendered by the Capetonian Liesl Stoltz has not been heard here for a long time. And do not dismiss the Odeon Symphony. Their well-balanced playing is astonishing.

Stoltz and Rodrigues as an international duo have already won international prizes, and in Ferdinande Carulli’s G major Concerto for flute and guitar they showed us why.Stoltz’s share in the work, which exploits a wide spectrum of technical possibilities on both instruments, was particularly enchanting.

Her flute sound is scintillating, the runs sparkle, phrasing is musically satisfying and her articulation effortlessly spontaneous. Breath control is apparently second nature, and that from such a slight physique.Her technical brilliance remains unobtrusive, so that the flow of the music predominates. And that is after all what is important – to let the music sing.Rodrigues’ playing was not always as excellent as Stoltz’s, but it is obvious that their regular performances as a duo has resulted in perfectly smooth interaction.

This duo will always be welcome in Bloemfontein Piazzolla’s Tango encore left me longing for more.
Elretha Britz