Kosins, Borne, Debussy, Boehm & Dinicu

COMPOSERS: Boehm & Dinicu,Borne,Debussy,Kosins
LABELS: Crystal
ALBUM TITLE: Collection: Love Letters
WORKS: Works
PERFORMER: David Shostac (flute); Anita Swearengin (piano)
CATALOGUE NO: CD 314

The flautist David Shostac, veteran of many American orchestras and film sessions, has an outstandingly fluent technique and a pleasant, well-focused tone, with just a touch of shrillness in the extreme top register. Here he is set a severe test of virtuosity by two 19th-century showpieces – the Carmen Fantasy by François Borne and the Variations by the inventor of the modern flute, Theobald Boehm – as well as by Dinicu’s famous Hora Staccato, but passes with flying colours. Shostac’s singing tone makes an equally favourable impression in an effective arrangement of Debussy’s Fille aux cheveux de lin, and in Love Letters by Martin Scot Kosins, a suite with the easy melodic appeal of film or TV music. All these recordings, with acceptable piano-playing but rather brittle piano sound, date from 1984. They have been augmented by Kosins’s equally anodyne Winter Moods for unaccompanied flute, recorded in a much more bathroomy acoustic, and hardly a generous addition in view of the overall playing time. Incidentally, Kosins, born in 1947, is described in the notes as a composer, record producer, concert and supper-club pianist, university teacher, critic, poet and best-selling author. What will he do when he grows up? Anthony Burton