I’m preparing Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Sonatina for flute and guitar, Op. 205, for this quarter’s chamber program. He wrote it in 1965, a small piece in three movements: a graceful Allegretto, a melancholy Siciliana, and a Scherzo-Rondo to finish.
This piece is a shock for a flutist, not because the notes are hard. Usually, orchestral and classic-classical chamber playing trains flutists to project, blend, and phrase music the way it has always been phrased. None of that helps here. In a flute and guitar duo, the textures are thin, every detail is exposed, and where a phrase leans, how long a note lasts, how much time to take, even for a vibrato or half a note’s crescendo, are all decisions I actually have to make.
The guitar is part of it. Castelnuovo-Tedesco wrote nearly a hundred works for the instrument and knew how little sound it makes. Next to it, the flute has to give up power and find something else to offer.
Played well, it’s charming. Played without care, it’s extremely boring.
Andrea Oliva, with Giampaolo Bandini on guitar, plays it with taste: