My exceedingly talented partner Jonathan puts on a house flute concert, once in a while. Just prior to Christmas, this one hosted a little more than the usual half-to-a-dozen people. On a perfect summer’s evening, we listened to compositions from Georg Telemann, Johann Quantz, Arthur Honegger, Gordon Jacob, Edwin Roxburgh and Ross Edwards, with a Christmas arrangement by Jonathan himself to round out the concert.
The headline performance was Roxburgh’s ‘The Curlew’ from Dreamtime (1992). While on tour in Australia with the Menuhin Festival Orchestra, Edwin Roxburgh came across the paintings of Ainslie Roberts which relate to the Dreamtime myths of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Later, when the English flautist Christopher Hyde-Smith commissioned Roxburgh to compose a work to represent the six different flutes in his collection, the characterisation of six of the paintings made an ideal association for each instrument. The fifth movement in Dreamtime uses the poignant quality of the alto flute to project the story of Bima, who becomes transformed into a curlew, wandering the forest at night lamenting the cruel death of her son.
