Sonatina

Description

Flute 1, Flute 2 — The SONATINA for Two Flutes was written in Tel Aviv, Israel, and represents an important moment in my life. Having begun composing at the age of seven, all my early creations involved either the piano or the human voice – singing or narrating – and thus could be realized in performance by me alone. When I was twelve years old, I decided the time had come to stretch out and explore instruments I did not play myself, and the SONATINA was my first such effort. Very fortunately for me, it was soon played by a number of duos in Israel, most notably by Hanoch and Sharona Tel-Oren of Israel’s Radio Orchestra (now the Jerusalem Orchestra), who toured with the work extensively throughout Israel. In three movements, the SONATINA illustrates the Israeli/Mediterranean style employed by many Israeli composers at the time of its composition.At a later point, I withdrew from my catalog all those works which I composed before 1968 (including several orchestral compositions and many solo and chamber pieces), because of their stylistic distance from my later music. More recently, when approached by Mary Stolper with a recording project of my chamber and solo works which include flute, I offered, hesitantly at first, to include only the last movement of this early SONATINA. A while later, Mary presented me with a most persuasive performance, in concert, of the entire work, which led to a decision to add it to five other compositions of mine spanning the period from 1969 to 1990. Mary’s recording of my solo and chamber music, including this SONATINA, is available on the Erato CD Mirage, 0630-12787-2.