Giacinto Scelsi is one of classical music’s great eccentrics: a self-taught Roman playboy count who flirted with various eastern philosophies and decided his music was an intermediary between humans and their gods. His flute works mostly date from the 1950s and are either preoccupied with interpersonal relationships, for example the fluttering Ko-Lho duo for flute and clarinet, or with circular structures, such as the ceremonial gongs and spacial play of Hyxos. This disc features dauntless performances from Claudia Giottoli, who makes a big, breathy, wholesome kind of sound on the flute – playing in which the percussive noise of finger hitting keypad is as audible as any note. I like the physicality and the voluptuousness of it: it feels real, not too manicured and exactly right for a composer who was obsessed by the holistic nature of tone. “It contains everything,” he once wrote about what constitutes sound. “That’s how it becomes great, part of the cosmos, even when it’s minimal.”
