Shanghai Quartet - Music for a Sunday Morning (1995)

This new recording tells us how flute virtuosa Eugenia Zukerman might spend her own Sunday mornings when she’s not reporting to the American public on Charles Osgood’s CBS Sunday Morning show. With her friends and frequent collaborators, the Shanghai Quartet, she has put together a program of favorite weekend music which truly includes something for everyone. Zukerman and the Shanghai follow up their title-track performance on ‘Heigh-Ho! Mozart’ (DE 3186) with real Mozart, in an enchanting arrangement of the familiar serenade. Shirley Fleming points out, in her delightful album notes, that “the flute takes the top line originally written for the first violins, and sounds as if it belongs there by birthright.” Fleming also describes the collegium musicum in Leipzig, where Bach’s Ouverture would have been played “in the summer outdoors in a ‘coffee garden’ at 4 P.M. on Wednesdays.” In addition to the regular notes, Fleming has provided a set of lively and concise Young People’s notes. The lovely Quintet by Amy Beach will be of considerable interest in this time of Beach revival, as will the sprightly Scherzo by Beach’s fellow New Englander Arthur Foote. Written within a year of each other, both pieces are lyrical and accessible. Ginastera’s atmospheric Impresiones conjures up images of the high mountain valleys, or puna, of the northern Andes, and of the native flute (Quena) of the region.