Review: Renowned flutist Emmanuel Pahud gives an expert and expressive recital in St. Paul

There’s an old adage among jazz musicians that they reserve for only the most expert of vocalists: That when that particular singer sings a song, it “stays sung.” In other words, the definitive version has been performed.

That phrase came to mind during Wednesday night’s Schubert Club International Artist Series recital by the current king of the hill among classical flutists, Emmanuel Pahud. Over the course of four sonatas, three romances and an encore, Pahud and pianist Alessio Bax not only made me feel as if I might never encounter repertoire for flute played this expertly, but that Pahud is capable of taking works written for violin and inspiring you to wonder if they should have been flute pieces all along.

And that’s saying something, when you consider that two works on the program were written for the greatest violinists of their era: Clara Schumann created “Three Romances” for Joseph Joachim, while César Franck wrote his Sonata in A for Eugène Ysaÿe. But Pahud executed his own arrangements of them in such a way that they could be mistaken for lost masterworks for flute.

The same could be said of Mozart’s Violin Sonata in E Minor, especially the sad, introspective second movement, which may or may not have been inspired by the death of Mozart’s mother. Bax made the piano part sound as if the composer were inventing romanticism a half-century early, while Pahud filled his playing with emotion. Yet there was a mesmerizing expressiveness to much of what Pahud played, never more heart-on-sleeve than during the “Three Romances” of Clara Schumann.

The concert’s summit arrived with the first piece actually written for the flute, J.S. Bach’s Flute Sonata in B Minor. This was when the teamwork between Pahud and Bax was at its most palpably simpatico. As Bax brought a lively crispness to a part originally written for harpsichord, the two bobbed and weaved across flowing melodic lines. After a slow movement with the tone of a sad lullaby, Pahud launched into the swift dance of the sonata’s Presto movement, its fleet phrases eloquently delivered, the fluctuating dynamics executed with impeccable breath control.

Contemporary French composer Nicolas Bacri wrote the concert’s freshest creation, his 2020 Sonata No. 3, a work written expressly for Pahud and Bax, although it was inspired by the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of Pahud’s predecessors as the world’s foremost flute virtuoso, Jean-Pierre Rampal. Pahud brought a questioning air to his part, sounding something like a curious wanderer in the dark, minor-key forest created by Bax’s piano. Soon, it burst into a playful romp that gave a glimpse of the sense of swing the flutist is known for displaying in his collaborations with French jazz pianist Jacky Terrasson.

The program ended with an extraordinarily elegant take on Franck’s Sonata for Violin and Piano in A Major, likely the concert’s most familiar piece for the appreciative audience at St. Paul’s Ordway Concert Hall. Gracefully gliding about a small space beside the piano, the flutist was balletic in his movements while capturing the essence of romanticism in his playing. And Bax did marvelous things with the sonata’s thick textures, the two bringing an absorbing darkness to its third movement.

A lengthy and impassioned standing ovation inspired the pair to send the audience off into the chilly night with a warm take on Gabriel Fauré’s “Sicilienne,” Pahud proving once again that he could put his own stamp on even the most familiar of pieces.

Rob Hubbard can be reached at wordhub@yahoo.com.