Fantasie for Flute and Piano, Op55

From the Publisher

Intense and passionate sweeping lines infused with melancholy are carefully balanced with playful, burbling passage-work. A highly welcome addition to the otherwise somewhat sparse Austro-Germanic Romantic flute repertoire. A virtuoso work in terms of tonal expression as well as of articulation and nimble finger-work.

Editor's Notes

A few years ago my friend, the wonderful cellist and great champion of Carl Fruhling's music, Steven Isserlis, very kindly me a copy of this beautiful Fantasie which he found in the music library in Vienna.  After performing this work several times I feel it is absolutely worthy of sharing with the flute world so we can all enjoy this neglected treasure!

Though originally for flute and orchestra, it appears that only this flute and piano version has survived, yet personally I have no sense of it being an arrangement at all.  Perhaps this is in part because Fruhling was himself a well-respected pianist who worked with many of the most celebrated musicians of his day including Sarasate and Arnold Rose, Mahler's brother-in-law and leader of the Vienna Philharmonic for over half a century.

In a catalogue dating from the 1950s, some 100 works by Fruhling are listed, though sadly most were unpublished and/or unperformed during his lifetime and many seem to have vanished.  This Fantasie was first performed in Vienna in 1929 by the flautist Friedrich Schonfeld (b. 1895 in Vienna).  Fruhling's only other recorded flute work is a flute duet, Duettino op. 57.  Was Fruhling commissioned or simply inspired to write these works?  So little is known about this Viennese Jew who died in abject poverty that we may never find out..............

Emily Beynon

Performance duration (approx): 15'

Item Details

Instrumentation

• Part 1: Flute
• Part 2: Piano