Martin Schmalz - Martin Schmalz: Chamber Music for Flute & Piano (2021)

When looking at the contemporary composer scene, two extremes emerge again and again: either they are technical avant-gardists who work with computers and live electronics and offer a widely differentiated sound spectrum bordering on arbitrariness, or they are composers who fervently convey religious messages send out, mostly based on a quite banal belief in children, no trace of serious theological knowledge; the tonal result is then mostly a kind of neo-Gothic noble kitsch.

Martin Schmalz, who was born in 1975, does not have both extremes, and that has a positive effect. In a good 11 minutes, the sonata for piano heard at the beginning builds on various models of classical modernism and forms a thoroughly stringent unit. Schmalz himself says that he takes up the traditions of music history in his own way, but that he definitely wants to be modern. That is honorable, but the following works do not lack a certain schematism, a formal regularity from which it is difficult to hear a real inspiration. Now you don't have to agree with the annoyed reviewer who once demanded that music for solo flute be banned for the next 25 years - which of course wasn't meant seriously. But Schmalz Duet Sonata for two flutes actually appears to be quite low-tension in its traditionalism. With “his” instrument, Schmalz then achieved a greater wealth of ideas, for example in the interludes for piano. The interpretations of the three flautists are always useful and technically flawless.