Sigfrid Karg-Elert: Equinoxes (Complete Flute Works) – Casale-Rouxel Duo

The music of Sigfrid Karg‑Elert has long accompanied the path of many flautists. His 30 Caprices are an integral part of instrumental training, as are the Sinfonische Kanzone and the Sonata Appassionata for solo flute, which are regularly performed and studied. Yet this pedagogical familiarity stands in sharp contrast to the relative absence of his music from concert programmes and discography, where it is often presented in fragments and rarely approached from a comprehensive perspective.

This monographic project was born from that very paradox. Beneath these well‑known works lies a daring musical language, at times deliberately disjointed, yet marked by exceptional expressive richness and interpretative intensity. Karg‑Elert embraces rupture, harmonic tension and constant shifts of character, demanding from the performer a heightened sense of listening, great temporal flexibility and an extended palette of colours.

Our engagement with contemporary repertoire has deeply informed this approach. Close attention to unstable temporalities, stark contrasts and the transformation of musical gesture has enabled us to approach this music with an assumed freedom, restoring to Karg‑Elert’s writing its full spring‑like vitality – changing, unpredictable, almost schizophrenic in its exuberance.

For the listener, we invite an immersion comparable to an equinox season: a shifting, colourful landscape in which light and shadow coexist, and where the most pronounced contrasts form the very essence of the musical discourse.