Flauguissimo Duo
Reid Concert Hall 10/2/26
Reid Memorial Concert: works by General Reid, Handel, Kapsberger, and Roman
Flauguissimo Duo; Yu-Wei Hu (baroque flute), Johan Löfving (theorbo)
In 1807 General John Reid (c.1721-1807) left £50,000 (£5 million today) to his alma mater the University of Edinburgh, and the Reid Concert Hall and Reid Music Library are named after him. A keen flautist and composer, Reid stipulated that a concert should be held each year on or near his birthday (thought to be 13 February), to include at least one of his compositions. A pretty modest request. Many of his works were composed for wind bands, but he also wrote two sets of six sonatas or ‘solos’ for his own instrument the flute and figured bass, one of which we heard in full today.
The Flauguissimo Duo consists of baroque flautist Yu-Wei Hu and theorbo player Johan Löfving, experienced early musicians who have been playing together since 2008. They specialise in the intimate salon music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The concert began in military mood with a short piece, the Allegro moderato from Solo (Sonata) III by General John Reid. Yu-Wei Hu introduced her instrument, a four-piece baroque flute with interchangeable joints, explaining how it had evolved from the earlier one-piece instrument when travelling flute players encountered organs in different pitches on their travels and needed to change the pitch of their instruments accordingly.
Next came the Sonata no. 5 in G Major by George Frideric Handel (1685-1759), operatic in style, with lots of emotion. The flute demonstrated variations in tone and texture controlled by breath and the lightest of touches, with the theorbo underpinning the work.
Then it was time for the theorbo to take centre stage as solo instrument. Johan Löfving introduced us to his theorbo. An elegant, long-necked lute, with several long free-vibrating bass strings next to the shorter, fretted strings, the theorbo was (and is) predominantly used as a continuo instrument to accompany higher instruments or voices, but it is a beautiful instrument in its own right. It can even accompany itself! It always makes me happy to see a theorbo in a concert.
With between eleven and nineteen strings, the theorbo takes a lot of tuning. Johan told us that before a solo piece the musician would often play a short improvisation to check the instrument was in tune before playing the main piece, which he then proceeded to do.
It was a Canario by the Austrian-Italian Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger (1580-1651), a lively dance from the Canary Islands, with a savage, syncopated rhythm enhanced by tapping the soundboard and body of the instrument between notes.
Both instruments joined together again for the Solo (Sonata) IV by Reid, which demonstrated that Reid was a serious composer and not merely a dilettante. He was a flute player, and his compositions for the instrument show his deep understanding of its natural textures and capabilities. First came a rippling allegro moderato, then a darker and more languid largo affettuoso, finishing with a jolly minuet to lighten the atmosphere.
The final piece was by a composer new to me, the Swedish Johan Helmich Roman (1694-1758). His Sonata no.4 in G major for flute and basso continuo consists of three movements, the middle of which is a piva (Swedish country dance). The piva stood in marked contrast to the stately largo before and jaunty allegro after it, with lively dance rhythms breathlessly speeding up and slowing down at helter-skelter pace. This delightful sonata is from the only set of compositions published in Roman’s lifetime.
We were given a generous encore with local associations. Two old Scottish songs arranged by Francesco Barsanti (1690-1775) and published in 1742 when he was employed by the Edinburgh Musical Society: ‘The Lass of Peatie’s Mill’ and ‘Birks of Invermay’. These songs were played with a swinging lilt, and more tapping of the theorbo. The enthusiasm and enjoyment of these two excellent musicians were infectious, and I left the Reid Concert Hall thanking the Flauguissimo Duo, General John Reid, and the Music Department of Edinburgh University for an excellent concert.
photo credit: Aiga Ozo Photography
