NCH, John Field Room, Dublin

Copland

– Duo.

Burton

– Sonatina.

Muczynski

– Sonata Op 14.

DeLaney

– . . . and the strange unknown flowers . . . .

Hoover

– Masks.

Lowell Liebermann

– Sonata Op 23

THIS CONCERT by Julie Maisel (flute) and Colman Pearce (piano) was billed simply as “celebrating American music”. Strange as it may seem, the clear American connections of the two performers were nowhere declared in connection with the concert.

Maisel is a US flautist who is teaching at the DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama. Pearce, who is known to Irish audiences as a conductor, composer and pianist, was conductor of the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra from 1987 to 1999.

The best-known of the evening's works were those by the oldest and youngest of the six composers represented, the 1971 Duoby Aaron Copland (1900-90) and the Flute Sonata, written by Lowell Liebermann in 1988.

Maisel’s delivery had a kind of artless directness about it, the tone showing most often a wistful kind of plainness. Pearce was a somewhat brusque partner at the piano, not always accommodating in terms of balance or in the overall shaping of the material.

It was Liebermann’s sonata which made the better impression, the busy nature of much of the writing and its extremes of contrast coming across more strongly than the leaner Copland.

The 1948 Sonatina by Eldin Burton (1913-79) is popular with American flautists, but it’s a rather anodyne piece that seems to be much more fun to play than to listen to. It shared the aspiration of ending on a perky note with the 1961 Flute Sonata by Robert Muczynski (1929-2010).

The Thomas Wolfe-inspired . . . and the strange unknown flowers .. . by Charles DeLaney (1925- 2006), was written for the 1990 High School Soloist Competition of the National Flute Association.

It was the evening’s only work for solo flute, and it explored the kind of pastoral evocativeness opened up in the early years of the 20th century by Debussy’s Syrinx.

The recital's most recent piece, Masks(1998) by Katherine Hoover, took its inspiration from masks of various cultures. The opening and closing movements provided the evening's most characterful moments.

The first (relating to a Haida, a northwest Native American mask) was imposing, sometimes ominous, the last (the mask unidentified “left entirely to your imagination”) created an aura of ritualised exoticism.