Flute and Guitar Duo Delivers a Delightful Chamber Concert

A brilliant debut and a bright, novel program for flute and guitar marked the latest Sunday afternoon chamber music event in modest Founders Hall at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

Emmanuel Pahud, the 29-year-old Swiss musician at present the principal flute of the Berlin Philharmonic, joined veteran guitarist Manuel Barrueco in a delightful and unhackneyed agenda of music by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Michael Daugherty, Leo Brouwer, Telemann, Debussy and Piazzolla--lively and lyric works for both the instrumental combination and solo display.

Pahud and Barrueco are personable, probing and high-energy virtuosos; they unearth and savor beauties in each score as well as they conquer all its technical challenges. Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s gorgeous and substantial late (1965) Sonatina could not have been a more persuasive beginning to this colorful performance. At the other end of the event, Piazzolla’s suite, “Histoire du Tango,” gave matching joys to the listener.

In between, the duo delivered full value to Daugherty’s clever and irresistible “I Loved Lucy.” Then, the Cuban-born guitarist, with technique to burn and a wondrous gift for delving into the composer’s thoughts, played Brouwer’s “Rite of the Orishas,” a sound-landscape of apparent narrative complexity and some compositional meandering.

For his solo spot, flutist Pahud sandwiched a haunting and emotionally rich performance of Debussy’s familiar “Syrinx” between two Baroque Fantasies (Nos. 6 and 7) by Telemann, offering in all three pieces of a stylish and kaleidoscopic variety.

After being given all this pleasure with such touching musicality and effortless skills, the enthusiastic audience was accorded four encores, an appropriate bonus.