Beauty Crying Forth: Flute Music by Women Across TimeSarah Frisof & Daniel Pesca

Literally a breath of fresh air, this album expertly compiles music composed by women for flute and piano (mostly), stretching from Clara Schumann's Three Romances (1853) to Shulamit Ran's Birds of Paradise (2014). Tania León's Alma (2007), brightly sets the tone of the album, which is rarely less than sunny. The one exception is Kaija Saariaho's Cendres (1998), which adds cello (Hannah Collins) to Frisof's flute and Pesca's piano. With wild flutterings from the flute and hard-driven cello, often slicing into harmonics, Cendre is a mysterious knockout, like a smoky cocktail that forces you to lay down and contemplate the inside of your eyelids. Pour me another!

— Jeremy Shatan, 9.29.2020

The scope of composers on this absolutely beautiful recording is impressive, spanning a century and a half with Tania León, Clara Schumann, Amy Williams, Lili Boulanger, Kaija Saariaho, and Shaluamit Ran.

It’s a remarkable collaboration between flutist Sarah Frisof and pianist Daniel Pesca, evocatively illustrated in Amy Williams’ First Lines, comprising 11 very short movements, each of which instantly transports the listener to another realm. Williams based each on the initial passage of expressive poetry by five different poets: Toi Derricotte, Patricia Goedicke, Colleen McElroy, Marilyn Chin, and Olga Sedakova. In the sixth, inspired by the opening of Chin’s Hospital in Oregon, the piano sounds strikingly similar to a flute or bird, beautifully imitating the timbre of Frisof’s flute; the wistful content of its first line, “Shhh, my grandmother is sleeping,” is tenderly performed. The ninth movement ends with a hollow breath sound that seems to reach out to a wistful infinity, capturing the essence of the first line of Goedricke’s The Princes of Heaven: “First it is only the sunlight / creeping up out of the dunes.” Frisof and Pesca imaginatively capture the spirit of each movement with complete coordination along with a feeling of spaciousness and grandeur.

Overall, this recording exhibits a remarkably high level of ensemble work, including phrasing, articulation, dynamics, use of textures, density, and mood. Cellist Hannah Collins especially stands out in Kaija Saariaho’s Cendres, adding a remarkable amount of depth and color to the mysteriously evocative and virtuosic work.

Several of the pieces demand a very high technical level, with bird-like flourishes and acrobatics, and Frisof masters these challenges with artistry. León’s “Alma,” for example, calls for this energetic brilliance while also incorporating contrasting expressive and lyrical sections. The musicians display mastery of contemporary performance techniques, including timbral tone changes, timbral tremolos, use of overtones and whistle tones as part of the harmonic and melodic line, ghostlike breath tones, and microtones. The special effects don’t come across as something used to show off—they occur naturally and expressively bring the listener to a more dream-like place. The performers are adept at these musical transformations and make each work come alive with both first-rate techniques and remarkably sensitive playing.

The liner notes are revealing, too—the composers offer wonderful insight, such as León, who writes: “In Spanish, ‘alma’ means soul or spirit; invisible forces, like the wind that caresses the chimes outside my window. The opening and closing of the piece evoke the sound of these chimes. The mood of the middle sections is propelled by the cascading of pitches that at times converge and diverge, a myriad of colors in playful conversation of bouncing gestures.” Frisof does just this in her excellent rendition of this luminous work.

— Andrea Kapell Loewy, 9.01.2021

An album generally starts in your experience with a cover image. So the image above peered back at me as I opened the package that contained it. The title told me what to expect, Beauty Crying Forth, Flute Music By Women Across Time (Furious Artisans FACD6826). It is performed, as the jacket explained, by Sarah Frisof on flute, Daniel Pesca at the piano, and for one work Hannah Collins joining in on cello.

Of course it is in the listening that everything takes form. So it is, very noticeably so, with this album. The deep impression one gets immediately is what a remarkable flautist is Sarah Frisof. She has a markedly sweet and musical tone, considerable agility and a sure and poetic sense of phrasing. Pianist Daniel Pesca has interpretive talent in his own way, plus too a personal commitment to sounding his part with care and imagination. In tandem the two together approach every work with a fresh start and a feel for the individuality of each piece. Hannah Collins fits right in too, quite impressively, on the Saariaho work she participates in.

And that strength of individual performance character ideally suits the wide-ranging program, spanning from Clara Schumann's expressively intimate "Three Romances" of 1853 through to Shulamit Ran's now-ish 2014 "Birds of Paradise."

The opening "Alma" (2007) by Tania Leon brilliantly manages to bring an opening and closing New Music representation of wind chimes to a virtuoso array of kaleidoscopic middle sections of great spirit, one passage sounding especially, pronouncedly Cuban-Latin-New Music fused. It is all a delight.

Clara's "Romances" follows, giving us a ravishingly contrasting lyrical tenderness and some soaring flute-piano interplay. Sarah's flute literally glows with warmth here and we feel the inventive period talent of Ms. Schumann fully and happily.

Amy Williams contrasts the above with the eleven movement, very boldly New Music work "First Lines." It gives us fascinatingly vivid and ornately varying sound-color miniatures with a great deal of panache.

The gone-much-too-soon Lili Boulanger (1893-1918) appears before us with the brightly beautiful brief and Impressionistic gems "Nocturne" and "D'un matin de printemps," played with lovely care. Just these alone make all worthwhile.

Next we get the spacefully sonic trio for flute, cello and piano, the 1998 "Cendres" by Kaija Saariaho. It bursts forward with a marvelously evocative quality, suggesting and making present landscapes that burst forward for miles and must be taken in with their many imaginative musical motions. Marvelous.

The finale in "Birds of Paradise" brings to us the immediacy of the last decade (2014) and Shulamit Ran's energetically dynamic, deeply contemplative, probing music.

So we end where we began, roughly in the present, having traversed the now and the then with some excellent music by women composers of real stature, played with exceptional poise by Sarah Frisof, Daniel Pesca and Hannah Collins. Strongly recommended for anyone who loves the flute and is open to great chamber music by women past and present. Bravo!

— Grego Applegate Edwards, 1.29.2021

American flautist Sarah Frisof presents here the music of women composers “through time.” This includes the female Romantic composer du jour, Clara Schumann; the modern female composer of the decade, Kaija Saariaho; one famous midpoint composer, Lili Boulanger; and three other contemporary women composers of whom the most famous is Shulamit Ran.

The first piece, Tania León’s Alma, is a fascinating and complex work using atonal top lines and lip buzzes on the flute against an essentially tonal piano accompaniment. The title, however, does not refer to Alma Mahler but, rather, the Spanish use of the word to mean “soul or spirit; invisible forces, like the wind that caresses the chimes outside my window.” These are some pretty edgy winds, however, which include double-time figures with an interesting progression. To my ears, Alma sounded like an uptempo “mood” piece; by the four-minute mark we are engaged in a fast passage with Latin rhythm before returning to the lip buzzes in the finale.

Clara Schumann’s 3 Romances are what they are, nice but unexceptional pieces for flute. Clara was a solid composer but not very original or very interesting. It’s in-one-ear-and-out-the-other music although Frisof plays these pieces exceptionally well, giving them an energy and zest I’ve never heard in Clara’s music before, and Daniel Pesca is an equally interesting accompanist.

Amy Williams’ First Lines, at first exposure, appears to be one of those modern-edgy pieces that are all the rage today, yet as the short movements follow one another one is struck by her ability to create interesting sonorities with just these two instruments, using both in a very percussive manner. This is especially true of the piano, which is often required to pluck the strings or bang inside the frame of the instrument. The music is not at all melodically appealing, nor does it try to be; it is, rather, a series of brief experiments in the combination of sonority and rhythm. In the sixth piece, quarter = 88, the flautist simply blows air through her instrument, producing no fixed tone. A bit gimmicky? Perhaps, but to my ears very effective.

After such a strange piece, the Debussy-like Nocturne of Lili Boulanger almost sounds old-fashioned but for the rootless chords and harmonic shifts. D’un matin de printemps sounds more modern still, with surprising juxtapositions of harmonies, and again the team of Frisof and Pesca is superb.

Kaija Saariaho is described in the notes as a composer influenced “by the Spectral movement in French music,” but to my ears only some of her pieces are effective as music. Much of her later output seems to be more concerned with startling her audiences than creating pieces with any real forward progression or development. This 1998 trio for flute, cello and piano takes something of a midway point; it is also meant to startle the listener, but actually has some nice development and goes somewhere. The cello doesn’t get nearly as much as the flute or piano, and its part is rather ungrateful for the instrument, calling on the player to use edgy, “ugly” bowing. It is, however, a pretty interesting piece and exceptionally well played by all three musicians. We end with Shulamit Ran’s Birds of Paradise, another edgy piece but even better developed than the Saariaho work despite the use of more percussive passages for the flute and extremely strange harmonies for the piano.

There is no question but that this is a truly exceptional album, and that is due to Sarah Frisof’s spectacular playing. I was startled to learn in the booklet that she was only a semifinalist at the 2009 Kobe International Flute Competition and placed second in the National Flute Association’s Young Artist Competition. This is a musician of exceptional skills and, better yet, musical sensibilities, a probable successor to the older and more established Tara Helen O’Connor. I wish her well in her career and most certainly would like to hear further releases by her!

— Lynn Bayley, 9.02.2020

Sarah Frisof’s newly released album Beauty Crying Forth is an exploration of powerful music by woman composers from Clara Schumann (1853) to Shulamit Ran (2014). Frisof, the Associate Professor of Flute at the University of Maryland is a wonderful player, with great, versatile technique, beautiful sound and a keen understanding of contemporary music. She is accompanied beautifully by Daniel Pesca on piano and Hannah Collins on cello in Kaija Saariaho’s Cendres for flute, cello and piano.

Other pieces on the album are: Three Romances, Op 22 by Clara Schuman, Alma (2007) by Tania Leon, First Lines (2006) by Amy Williams, Nocturne (1911) and D’un matin de printemps (1918), by Lili Boulanger and Birds of Paradise (2014) by Shulamit Ran.

The CD is a wonderful survey of music by woman introducing us some excellent music by woman composers. Take Amy Williams First Lines inspired by first lines of poetry that the composer read at the Bellagio Center in Italy. She was struck by the ability of a strong poem to pull a reader in and thought – how can one do the same with music? In eleven short movement’s the music tries (and mostly succeeds) in evoking the words of the poems in sound. Number VI “Shhh, my grandmother is sleeping” (poet Marilyn Chin) where the flute mimics a sleeping, snoring person (and some noise) is wonderful.

Tania Leon’s Alma, is a deeply felt exploration of moods using flute and piano. Here Sarah quickly exchanges the ideas and feelings that the composer presents with virtuosity and clarity. I love the mixture of abstract and Cuban music.

In the Clara Schumann’s Three Romances we hear a full romantic sonata, played with perfect style and ensemble by Frisof and Pesca. And I always love the two short Lili Boulanger pieces and wished she had stayed with us longer.

Saariaho’s Cendres for flute, cello and piano an atmospheric, evocative piece is played with deep understanding. The trio uses color, texture and vibrato to uncover the meaning and beauty in this piece, and their pitch is truly outstanding in this difficult piece.

Shulamit Ran’s tour de force Birds of Paradise is brilliantly played by both Frisof and Pesca, the third movement especially played with shimmering technique, ensemble and depth of understanding.

It’s still important to spend time listening to music by woman composers even as progress has been made. Consider that the excellent label Furious Artisans that is dedicated to New American music and that produced this album doesn’t mention a female composer in its mission statement! So this album is a terrific way to begin (or continue) listening to and learning about music by composers who happen to be women and to focus attention on their music.

— Barbara Siesel, 11.01.2020

This is actually a hard core act of female empowerment as the principals make it seem like this is a various artist compilation subsuming their own names well below the line. Focusing on flute/piano classical duets, all the composers are women and they are chosen from various periods and places. A recital kind of set with no egghead pretensions, this music is all good no matter who wrote it but it is nice to give a proper shout out to those who might have otherwise been unsung that deserve an ear. Well done.

— Chris Spector, 8.12.2020