Phoenix notes
Phoenix - for flute & orchestra
I - Lento
II -Allegro vivace
The legend of the phoenix stretches back even further than its reputed lifespan - anything from 500 to 12,954 years. In the Western tradition, the phoenix is a bird with gorgeous plumage of gold and purple feathers - the only one of its kind and always male. It would live for five or six centuries in the Arabian desert before burning itself on a funeral pyre, from which a new, young phoenix would emerge to begin another cycle. The broad outline of the phoenix story embodies both immortality and rebirth, while in its details we can recognise the unique, solitary, even magical existence of the fabulous bird. Its appearances in literature have ranged from the literal in E. Nesbit's The Phoenix and the Carpet to Shakespeare's allegorical poem, The Phoenix and the Turtle. In Shakespeare's Henry VIII, it is the infant princess Elizabeth who is prophetically hailed as the 'maiden phoenix' - to die without progeny, the House of Stuart rising from the 'sacred ashes of her honour'. But the bird's connection with music also has its origins in ancient legend: the phoenix lived close to a cool well on which it would bathe each morning, singing a song of such beauty that the sun god would pause his chariot to listen.
As a concerto for flute and orchestra, John Carmichael's Phoenix makes tangible reference to the phoenix's solitary existence, and to the beauty of its melodies would surely stop any contemporary sun god. Yet it is the concept of death and rebirth that emerges most clearly in the musical structure. Carmichael conceived the work in two movements, 'the first elegiac and the second spirited and rejuvenated', to reflect the twin aspects of the phoenix myth. The music is not confined to a specific scenario but instead expresses the crucial events: the death of the phoenix in an orchestral conflagration which 'engulfs the solo flute' at the climax of the first movement, and its rebirth in the jubilant re-emergence of the soloist in the second.
The music was composed for the then Principal Flute of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, Owen Fissenden, and James Galway also expressed an interest in the work after seeing an early draft. As it turned out, James Kortum with David Measham conducting the WASO gave the premiere of the first movement early in 1978.A broadcast recording of the complete work followed shortly after. Only in 1980, after he had recovered from injuries incurred in a major accident, was Galway able to give the first public performance of the complete work with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Louis Fremaux. For performances in 1998 with the Sydney Symphony under Nicholas McGeegan, Carmichael revised the orchestration, lightening textures in 'certain places where they were too heavy for the solo part'.
The first movement (Lento) begins in a subdued and rocking 6/8, the flute spinning a filigree solo line above the horns and strings. The music builds gradually to a more agitated 3/4 central section in which the flute-as-phoenix is consumed in the 'orchestral conflagration'. The movement then reverts to the opening theme, concluding in an even more sombre mood. The second movement (Allegro vivace) launches immediately into a march-like theme, but its spirited material is eventually exchanged for an exquisite cadenza shared with the harp, before the concerto ends with a 'lively skirmish' for flute and orchestra.
Perhaps the most striking feature of Phoenix as a flute concerto is its generous and colourful orchestra, including not only percussion, celeste and harp and a brass section of four horns, three trumpets, three trombones and tuba, but also two flutes in the wind section. On this rich orchestral canvas - completely in keeping with the fantastic nature of the concerto's subject - Carmichael projects both the virtuosity and remarkable range of tone colours of which the flute is capable.
Yvonne Frindle 1998.