At the Piano, ROLAND REVELL
How successfully the great Bach makes use of the innocent tone of the flute is by now known to all wireless listeners. In his hands it can be eithor plaintive, devotional, or frankly light-hearted at will. In many of the church cantatas, for instance, and in his bigger devotional works, it has a big share in expressing the simple faith which his music knows so well how to set forth.
But in his more mirthful music it has no less happy a share. We have two sets of three sonatas each, for flute and pianoforte, the first three on a rather more elaborate scale than the others-laid out with something of the importance of concertos. The other three, of which this is one, are more nearly akin to the suites, with movements in the dance rhythms of that age. The one in E Minor begins with a slow movement, ratner grave ana meditative in character, although it more than once rises to a climax of tone and finishes with emphatic strength. The second hurries along at great speed and with an irresistible freshness, so that one feels, as so often with Bach, that there was no reason at all why it should como to an end so soon as it docs. It by no means suggests that Bach had exhausted the possibilities of the merry running melody which goes all through it.