Pietro Eugenio Luigi Hugues (1836-1913)
Works for Flute and Piano
See contents listed after review
Paolo Dalmoro (transverse flute), Maurizio Fornero (piano)
rec. 2022, Mondori, Italy
Tactus TC 830802 [54]
The relatively little-known Pietro Eugenio Luigi Hugues (to give him his full name) was a part-time composer of considerable skill, though his work is not strikingly individual. He was born in the city of Casale Monferato in Piedmont, where his father was a prosperous textile merchant. After completing High School there, he attended University in Turin, enrolling in the Science Faculty. Hugues must surely have been playing the flute long before his time in Turin, since once there he was accepted as a student by Camillo Ramanino, principal flute in the city’s Royal Chamber Orchestra.
Hugues’ future career was to be as an academic geographer, initially as Professor of Geography at the Istituto Superiore Statale Leardi in Casale Monferato and later as Professor of Geography back at Turin University; he wrote several significant books in this field. However, alongside his academic teaching and his publications, he retained his commitment to the flute, as a composer, arranger and performer. He frequently gave concerts with his brother Felice, in Casale Monferato and elsewhere. Since the two of them played both flute and piano, they sometimes exchanged instruments during concerts.
The catalogue of Hugues’ compositions includes over two hundred works, the majority for flute, solo or with either piano or orchestra; he made many arrangements of popular melodies from opera and he also composed works for wind ensembles and a few sacred works. Beyond performance and composition, he also published a flute method, La scuola del flauto, which was widely used in Italian conservatoires up to (and possibly beyond) the middle of the Twentieth Century. Somehow, amongst all his activities, he also found time to serve as one of the organists at the Chiesa di Santo Stefano in Casale Monferato and to teach at the city’s Music School!
Like a lot of Italian composers of the Nineteenth Century who largely wrote instrumental music, Hugues is only now being rediscovered. This is the first CD to be entirely given over to Hugues’ music – though another Tactus disc (TC830801) has performances of several other works by Luigi Hugues along with music by Ernesto Kohler, one of his Italian contemporaries.
The best of the works on this disc are impressive and enjoyable. So, for example, the ’Sonata Fantastica’ lives up to the adjective in its title, while being a well-made work of considerable technical difficulty (it takes a good flautist to play much of Hugues music); the ‘Capriccio “Le Silfidi”’ is an engaging piece, which presents a believable aural image of the sylphs, the invisible spirits of the air. ‘Dans le Bois’ is another effective piece in a late-Romantic manner, creating the scene and atmosphere suggested by its title. Both these pieces have something French about them (the composer’s father was French). At times, I was reminded of the chamber music of Franck. The ‘Serenata in re minore’ (D minor), to judge by the fact that it is Hugues’ op.3 is presumably an early work; it is an elegant piece, with some lovely passages for the flute. None of the remaining pieces are without their rewards. All are played in a thoroughly appropriate idiom by flautist Paolo Dalmoro, playing a flute with eight keys made, around 1880, by the Parisian company of Couesnon (more famous for brass instruments), while Maurizio Fornero plays a Pleyel Grand Piano (Paris, 1890).
For some of the information in this review, I am indebted to an online essay by Enrico Sartori, ‘Luigi Hugues: Flutist, Composer and Geographer’.
Glyn Pursglove
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Contents:
Capriccio ‘Le Silfidi’, Op 29 No 2
Dans le Bois, Op 67
Flute Sonata in C major, Op 119
Flute Sonata in F major, Op 95
Serenata in D minor, Op 3
Sonata fantastica, Op 100
Sonata romantica, Op 57
