"Flûte en suite" Concerto for flute and orchestra

J. Widmann: "Flûte en suite" was composed in 2011 and premiered by flutist Joshua Smith and the Cleveland Orchestra on May 26, 2011, led by conductor Franz Welser-Möst.
The flute concerto was commissioned by The Cleveland Orchestra through the Young Composers Fund.

"This suite is not one of my 'epic' instrumental concertos, such as the concertos for cello, violin, or oboe, but a substantially smaller-structured series of dance forms arranged into a suite. Sunken worlds suddenly emerge here, only to reach the surface, hover in dangerously distorted fashion, and then sink back to the bottom.

Every individual movement allots the solo flute an instrumental group from the orchestra: in the opening Allemande, the flutes of the orchestra; the string section in the Sarabande; in both chorales the brass, etc.; and it is only in the concluding Badinerie that all orchestral groups are combined, although they are terraced in the Baroque style, one following another, seldom all playing simultaneously.
This permits the flute to remain the provider of all impulses; it attaches itself to the wide variety of instrumental colours, becomes suffused with these colours and thereby shines in different lights – acerbic, pale and radiant.
This first performance marks the conclusion of my two-year residence with The Cleveland Orchestra. The immense versatility of this fine body of sound and the exciting dark timbre of its principal flutist Joshua Smith have to a great extent determined the form and tonal character of my Flûte en suite."

Jörg Widmann