Eldin Burton, Sonatina für Flöte und Klavier, 1.Satz: Allegretto grazioso

Today's Classical Corner... supposedly Burton's idle published gem!

Eldin Burton (1913- 1979) was an American pianist who had ambitions as a composer, and took the first steps by enrolling in a composition course at the Juilliard School in New York. His Sonatina for flute & piano is his best-known work; it is an arrangement of a piano piece written as an exercise on a Juilliard School composition course! The Sonatina later won the Composition Contest of the New York Flute Club in 1948. Burton gave the first performance with the flautist Samuel Baron, and as the contest’s first prize was an offer of publication by Schirmer, the work survived in the repertoire. His flute concerto, written later, was never published and he seems to have given up composing, so the Sonatina is just about his only work still in the repertoire nowadays. Burton later took a job with Schirmer and seems not have have composed very much more.