Pahud borrows a concerto, steals the show
When flutist Emmanuel Pahud wants to play a concerto, he has a fairly large cache of great flute music to choose from. But when he performed with the Quebec Symphony this past summer, he made a somewhat surprising choice: the Violin Concerto by Aram Khachaturian. Pahud managed to pull it off in grand style. He gave a fierce performance of Khachaturian's rollicking 40-minute concerto, veering from brash rhythms to languid, jazzy melodies to charming Armenian folk tunes.