VoxCarnyx

St John’s Cathedral, Oban

For their return visit to Oban Music Society, the flute and piano partnership of Fiona Sweeney and Ben Eames, now trading under the name of the Greek goddess of sound, assembled a fine showcase in a programme entitled Nature, Mythology and Folklore.

The thematic link stood up well enough, but even more impressive was the structure of the recital, each half opening with the complimentary invitations of Lili Boulanger’s D’un Matin de Printemps and Debussy’s Prelude a L’apres-midi d’un Faune (the latter in a contemporary arrangement by the Royal Concertgebouw’s first flute Emily Beynon) and ending with two even more clearly narrative compositions: Carl Reinecke’s Undine Sonata and Amanda Harberg’s jazzy 2014 retelling of the myth of Icarus, Feathers and Wax.

In between, there were parallel excursions into works inspired by traditional music, the more obvious choice being Hamilton Harty’s In Ireland after the interval, and the earlier one being the contribution to the St Andrews Voices 2022 Scottish Songbook project by Fiona Sweeney’s sister Aileen, Eilean a’ Cheo. That personal link was further reflected in the second half with the inclusion of Orange Dawn, a short evocation of an East African sunrise by the flautist’s tutor at Guildhall School of Music, Ian Clarke.

With the sequence completed by William Grant Still’s Summerland, following the Debussy, and Boulanger’s Nocturne as an effective coda to the opener, it might have been preferable to hear the works flow with fewer spoken introductions, informative and useful though they were. Some of this music was exactly what might be expected – and wished for – from a flute and piano duo, but some of it was certain to be unfamiliar to most audiences, and knitting the two together as seamlessly as Aurras achieved was no mean achievement.

Equally it was a work-out for both halves of the partnership. Sweeney has a deceptively easy articulacy and a lovely tone across the range of her instrument, and she pitched the highest notes perfectly for the acoustic of this space. The Boulanger, Reinecke and Harberg pieces also give ample opportunity to the pianist and Aileen Sweeney’s arrangement of The Misty Isle asked a great deal of Eames, who is her husband.

Keith Bruce