hilary's tune

If you remember the biopic "Hilary and Jackie" (about cellist Jacqueline du Pre and her flautist sister Hilary), there is a scene where Hilary plays a piece to impress her new flute teacher. The teacher, however, tells her to go back to basics and focus on one note - the B at the beginning of the piece.

She was playing the Badinerie from the Orchestral Suite No. 2 in B minor by JS Bach, and in spite of the unhappy outcome of that performance in the movie, the piece has stayed with me and I am very pleased that I am now able to find my way through it. I think the trigger for actually learning it was stumbling upon this rendition from the young Spanish flautist, Andrea Rozas, on some sort of talent show.

Although it is written for flute and harpsichord, it works very nicely for solo flute. And I've managed to memorise it (it is a very short piece). I've also learned the previous movement of the suite, which is a minuet. Both are also very nice for the alto recorder. Check also this version of both movements on the pan pipes.


I used the sheet music from flutetunes.com, so I have no beautiful antiquarian edition to show, but here's a flute portrait I took last month at the Half Moon:



I love the fact that pubs have flute-sized mats to put your instrument down ...


After a year spent with JSB and CPE, I am now ready to play a composer whose last name is not Bach.

UPDATE 20.1.2020: Just a week before I am due to perform this piece, the jazz singer Sheila Blanco released a vocal version with a text (in Spanish) praising the life and work of JSB, called Bach es Dios. (Makes perfect sense, as Bach's music is mostly about praising God, so if she uses his music to praise him, and he is God, the circle is closed.) I will play this on closed loop until my performance in the hope of persuading my brain that it can actually work at this speed. The vocal version has 100 crotchets per minute, which sounds scary but is a bit slower than the 120+ speed that professional flautists choose for this piece. Personally I prefer my music a bit slower, so I find the 100 nice to listen to and maybe even achievable to play.