Works for Guitar and Flute

Isabelle Héroux, classical guitar

Patrick Healey, flute and piccolo

16-page booklet

Release : October 2006

Most of the classical repertoire pieces gathered here appear for the first time on disc and allow us to discover a more uncluttered aspect of the great Georges Delerue. The program is completed with duos which for the most part, have been transcribed from film music themes. Highly melodic, they are very representative of the composer's usual style.

SOLOS FOR GUITAR  • Trois visages

01  Dolores  1:57

02  Laetitia  2:38 

03  Paloma  1:28

04  Mosaïque 5:45

05  Graphic 5:11 

SOLOS FOR GUITAR  • Suite d'été

06  Recitativo  3:11

07  Mobile  2:33

08  Divertimento  2:20

09  Chorale  3:08

SOLO FOR FLUTE  Diptyque

10  Poco lento  4:21

11  Allegro 4:19  

DUETS FOR FLUTE AND GUITAR

12  Ballade romantique  1:44

13  Brouillard - excerpt from Jules et Jim  2:44

14  Sybille Theme - excerpt from Thibaud  2.03

15  Alexandrine - excerpt from Les Tribulations d'un Chinois en Chine  2:06

16  Cesar - excerpt from Le Diable par la queue  2:05 

17  Luigi - excerpt from Chère Louise  2:44

18  Pastorale Suite - excerpt from A Summer Story  6:25 

TT  57:40

Robert Schulslaper - Fanfare, USA, Sept/Oct 2008, Issue 32:1

Oeuvres pour Guitare et Flute brings us several substantial guitar works, along with Diptyque, his only composition for solo flute. Delerue’s Trois visages are derived from his score for L’autre Femme, a film set in Spain, hence the prevalent Spanish aura. The writing is restrained, rather spare, but the melodies sing movingly, colored by idiomatic harmonies and a few flamenco flourishes. With Mosaïque, Delerue clearly embarks on a different journey, forsaking a traditional Spanish style for a characteristically 20th-century harmonic and melodic conception. The Suite d’été (dedicated to one of Delerue’s daughters, herself a musician) is described as a “long, impressionist suite, a worthy exercise in style that favours experimentation.” It blends the “newer” approach of Mosaïque and Graphic with an approachable lyricism: the result could conceivably find a home in a film helmed by an adventurous director.

As mentioned, Diptyque, for solo flute, is unique among Delerue’s compositions. Like Mosaïque, it was written as an examination piece for students from the Conservatoire national supérieur of Paris. Allusions to Debussy’s Syrinx flit through the first, slower part, and the haunting tones of the flute suggest a host of mysterious images, from Pan to Rousseau (the painter). The second, faster movement uses skips, scales, and a variety of articulations to test the agility and musicality of the contestants. The language is less severe than in Mosaïque, more familiarly tonal and less abstract. I hear in its gravity-defying swirls and eddies an invitation to “slip the surly bonds of earth.” The duets for flute and guitar that follow this “flight of fancy” are uncomplicated settings of some typically melodious movie themes. My fondness for the music from Jules and Jim ensures that that film’s Brouillard would be my favorite. The other morceaux  may be less familiar, but no less enjoyable. Just to mention two: the Chinoiserie of Alexandrine —Delerue’s take on China, as seen from a French perspective—and Luigi ’s two flutes, spaced a minor third apart, which recall Andean folk music.