Halil (Flute, Piano, and Percussion)

Halil, A Nocturne for Solo Flute, String Orchestra, and Percussion (Flute, Piano and Percussion) By Leonard Bernstein, Published By Boosey and Hawkes.

Includes flute part and piano score.

Most people don’t know that Leonard Bernstein (1918 - 1990) wrote a flute concerto: “Halil” - a Nocturne for Solo Flute, String Orchestra, and Percussion. “Halil”, which means flute in Hebrew, is a piece commemorating a young Israeli flutist named Yadin Tanenbaum who was killed during the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Written in 1981, Halil, in the composers own words, is “formally unlike any other work I have written, but is like much of my music in its struggle between tonal and non-tonal forces. In this case, I sense that struggle as involving wars and the threat of wars, the overwhelming desire to live, and the consolations of art, love and the hope for peace. It is a kind of night-music, which, from its opening 12-tone row to its ambiguously diatonic final cadence, is an ongoing conflict of nocturnal images: wish-dreams, nightmares, repose, sleeplessness, night-terrors and sleep itself, Death’s twin brother.” Halil is a dark and powerful work that makes a statement against hate and violence while at the same time ponders some of the universe’s most unanswerable questions.

This Piece made it onto our list of The 19 Best Flute Concertos Not by Mozart.

Listen to Paula Robison & The Pheonix Orchestra perform Halil.