In Roussel's kinetically charged imagination, antiquity was frequently evoked with a propulsive yet sensuous vivacity that looms as one of the glories of Modernism. One thinks of the opera-ballet Padmâvatî (1914-1918), spiriting up a Hindu legend of love, violence, and ritualistic sacrifice with compelling vividness, or the overwhelming blaze of melody and orchestral color in the ballet Bacchus et Ariane (1930). The turning point from such rhapsodically glowing works as the symphonic poems Evocations (1910-1911) and Pour une fête de printemps (1920) to the concise integration of his neo-Classical last manner is marked, in part, by La Naissance de la lyre (1923-1924), a play with music -- based upon a discovered fragment of a satyr play by Euripides and appropriately inflected by Greek modes -- which directly preceded the composition of Joueurs de flûte (1924). The latter's four movements depict four legendary flute players and are dedicated each to a famous flutist -- "Pan" to Marcel Moyse (future founder of the Marlboro School of Music and teacher of James Galway and Paula Robison), "Tityre" to Gaston Blanquart, "Krishna" to Louis Fleury (dedicatee and first performer of Debussy's Syrinx, who gave Joueurs de flûte its premiere at a Concert de la Revue musicale, January 17, 1925), and "Monsieur de la Péjaudie" to Philippe Gaubert. Gaubert, pupil of Paul Taffanel and teacher of Moyse, was a highly respected musician -- Busoni dedicated his Divertimento for flute and orchestra to him -- who became professor of flute at the Paris Conservatoire, principal conductor of the Opéra de Paris and Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, and who left classic recordings of the Franck Symphony, Fauré's Ballade, and the Symphonie cevénole of Roussel's teacher, d'Indy. Confirming his nod to the Franck school -- at a time when his indebtedness to it had long been overwritten by a series of idiosyncratic masterpieces -- Roussel dedicated the entire work to Franck pupil and composer J. Guy Ropartz, director of the Nancy Conservatoire. Playing around nine minutes together, these pieces capture Roussel's style in quintessence -- spare lines and aphoristic utterance exotically colored. As the archetypal first flutist, Dorian arabesques in "Pan" slowly grow more animated, giving way to a moment of syncopated strut. "Tityrus," the rustic piper of Virgil's Eclogues, is represented by a briskly chirping dance. The sinuous sensuousness of "Krishna" looks back, with its Hindu scale, to the world of Padmâvatî, if not to aeons immemorial. And "Monsieur de la Péjaudie," the flutist of Henri de Régnier's novel La Pécheresse, appears with wryly blithesome diffidence. ~ Adrian Corleonis, All Music Guide
