The Poulenc Flute Sonata is one of those works which, if you respond to the idiom at all, catch you at once by the ear and heart—and this crisp yet sensitive performance, which begins the CD, will help matters along very pleasantly. Jennifer Stinton is a former student of the Royal Academy of Music and a pupil of Geoffrey Gilbert; her playing is sensitive and Scott Mitchell is a sympathetic partner. But although her flute sound is well caught in this recording made in The Maltings, Snape (that said, some shrill top Ds in the Prokofiev Sonata are a bit much) the pianist has been less lucky and the keyboard sonority is oddly thick and bass-heavy—to see what I mean, listen from about the three-minute mark in the ''Cantilena'', the second movement of the Poulenc, where admittedly the writing itself is heavy. However, one gets fairly used to this, and the recital as a whole is attractive.
The Prokofiev Sonata (later also recast as a violin sonata for David Oistrakh) is a sunny and substantial piece that belies its wartime date of composition. As for the Martinu Sonata, here, too, we have a work of considerable interest and charm by a composer whose stock is rising at a galloping pace, with players and public alike, as his extensive output of music becomes better known; it was written in 1945 in America. While on the subject of that country, I should perhaps tell you—for even Grove will not—that Eldin Burton was an American banker and part-time composer who was born in 1913 (the same year as Britten) and died in 1985. His style in this prize-winning Flute Sonata of 1946 is skilfully and agreeably conservative and tells us something about his generation and nationality, some debt to the late and much lamented Aaron Copland being apparent, though I suspect he also knew his Debussy. After this music, Faure's Morceau de lecture is a good choice to round the recital off with a pleasantly Gallic charm, balancing the Poulenc at the start.'