In the fall of 2017, during one of my concert weekends in Newport, Oregon, my wife and I met a young man from Germany in the lobby of the Sylvia Beach Hotel. He, Robert, had just spent the summer bicycling across the United States from Boston to Newport. We struck up a conversation and invited him to stay with us in Portland when he was on his way out of Newport. He was scheduled to fly back to Germany from Seattle in a week or two. We gave him some information about getting to Portland and exchanged contact info.
Shortly after that, we did indeed host him in Portland for a few days. We enjoyed his company and showed him a bit of our town, then sent him on his way to Seattle and his flight home.
About two years later, a mysterious package arrived from Germany. “What the heck is this?” I wondered. Upon opening it, I was flabbergasted to find a lovely hard-bound copy of a sonata for flute and piano which he had composed and dedicated to me. I was speechless! I had never had a work dedicated to me before. I emailed him my profound thanks and suggested that we should record it “together”.
Well, life intervened as it often does. Another year passed, including a broken arm (Adrian), a few more cross-country bike trips (Robert), and a global pandemic. Somewhere in there Robert was eventually able to record the piano part for the middle movement (“Siciliano”) and send me that video. I procrastinated many months (I had a concerto performance on my mind), and finally recorded the flute part and edited the two parts together.
Click here for our performance of the second movement, Siciliano, from Sonate in e minor, by Robert Klöckner. (Adrian Dee, flute; Robert Klöckner, piano. Video editing by Adrian Dee). Recorded in two different years on two different continents, this performance comes to you through the magic of technology.
Enjoy!
Adrian Dee, flutist, composer 