Various - Synergy - Sharon Bezaly & Friends - Bezaly, Sharon

On the Synergy album, flutist Sharon Bezaly and her musician friends show that one plus one can be much more than two. The project includes works that celebrate the meeting of like-minded musicians and reminds us all, after more than two years of the pandemic, that true musical synergy can only be achieved "face to face" and not "remotely." In his concerto for flute and recorder, Telemann not only creates a fusion of the different musical styles of his time – Italian, German, and French – but also demonstrates a talent for borrowing elements from popular music. Saint-Saëns brings swirling colors and energy to the flute, clarinet, and orchestra with his Tarentelle, which has occasional obsessive, even threatening undertones. Doppler's concerto for two flutes, composed around the same time, is not far removed from the world of opera, offering the two soloists ample opportunity to shine like two singers in front of an orchestra. The last two works on the album, Bachianas Brasileiras No. 6 and Suite of the Orchestral Works, not only celebrate the synergy between musicians, but are also delightful examples of synergy between composers: it is as if Villa-Lobos and Mahler were shaking hands with Johann Sebastian Bach across thousands of kilometers and hundreds of years.