Duo Zuber: Blackbird Redux
Belarca Records

The combination of flute and marimba makes for magical, winning results on this duo outing by New York-based Patricia and Greg Zuber. Of course one reason for the recording's appeal is that the instruments are fundamentally different in pitch and timbre, and consequently there's maximum separation between them. That in itself would hardly be enough to recommend the release, however, but in that regard there's little cause for concern: the performances and the compositions are both splendid, and the forty-one-minute running time feels just right.

The married couple have performed together since meeting in college and over thirty years have done much to expand the flute-and-marimba repertoire. Winners of multiple Grammy Awards, the Zubers have long been affiliated with New York's Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, she as an Associate Flutist and Greg as Principal Percussionist. For Blackbird Redux, the two selected works spanning six decades by Gareth Farr, Olivier Messiaen, William Susman, and Heitor Villa-Lobos (the one by Susman and Greg's arrangements of the Messiaen and Villa-Lobos works are world premiere recordings). Like the duo's sound, the works presented are also distinguished by dramatic contrast, the distinctly American sound of Susman's much different from Farr's Balinese gamelan-influenced and Villa-Lobos's Brazilian-flavoured pieces.

Kembang Suling, a 1995 work by Farr, introduces the release with “three musical snapshots of Asia.” Composed during the New Zealand composer's postgraduate studies at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, the piece directly references Bali, Japan, and South India in its movement titles, and consistent with that each part incorporates elements associated with the music of each locale. Farr's gamelan roots are on vibrant display in the exuberant “Bali” when the marimba and flute engage in a dance of flowing, intertwining melodies, their voices at some moments uniting and in others diverging as if doing battle with one another. Patricia's flute assumes a rather shakuhachi-like character for the dreamlike “Japan,” her ponderous musings draping themselves languorously across a gently murmuring pond of marimba patterns. Farr's gamelan leanings are perhaps most audible in the series of complex rhythms running through “South India” (apparently a three-bar cycle of 5/4, 5/8, and 5/16 is used) that the flute responds to with cross-rhythms and by doubling the marimba's pattern.

Originally scored for flute and piano, Messiaen's Le Merle Noir (1952) was performed by the Zubers at a concert honouring flutist Alexander Murray (one of Patricia's teachers) with a lifetime achievement award. In this seven-minute mini-portrait, the birdsong that came to influence much of Messiaen's post-Turangalîla output is evident in the darting melodic explorations of the flute, though a subtle hint of Indonesian gamelan also perhaps emerges in the marimba rhythms. Originally presented as a flute-and-cello arrangement, Villa-Lobos's Assobio a Játo (‘The Jet Whistle,' 1950) lends itself well to the duo's voices, ranging as it does from the lyrical lilt and haunting melodies of the opening “Allegro non troppo” on through the enticements of the lulling “Adagio” and boisterous conclusion “Vivo.”Given the work's emphasis on dance rhythms, it's easy to appreciate why the composer supposedly referred to the piece as “The Waltzing Jet Whistles: Pas de deux for Flute and Cello.”

February 2019