Press

 

 

CONCERT CRITIQUES

PRESS QUOTES…

 … the most exciting program of new music this listener has heard so far this year… Tim Page in the New York Times

 … an eccentric genius on her instrument… General-Anzeiger Bonn

 …playing that let one forget the time…. The Flute, Japan

Tout ce périple musical servi par la virtuosité, le charme, la seduction instrumentale de … Camilla Hoitenga. La Gazette Provencale

 …a lively and alluring soloist… The Independent

A shimmering aura enveloped the melodies, gently vibrating and devotedly celebrated by Hoitenga, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger

….transported her audience to another world.
 The Flute, Japan

…a captivating soloist, meltingly tender in the opening slow music and coquettishly lithe in the fast music of the second movement. She flung off the works trappings of virtuosity with ease… Daily Telegraph

…charismatic and exciting playing…all flautists should hear Hoitenga play. Pan

…virtuosic with compelling intensity and such vitality….
Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten

Camilla Hoitenga is more than a good instrumentalist:  she lives this music. She twirls and sings, she hisses and purrs. Hamburger Morgenpost

… a magic flutist…. Südkurier

 

CD CRITIQUES

L’AILE DU SONGE, 2002

Music : Kaija Saariaho – Poems : Saint-John Perse
Flute Concerto “L’Aile du songe”  • Flute solo “Laconisme de l’aile”
Camilla Hoitenga, flute • Amin Maalouf, reciter
Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra • cond. Jukka-Pekka Saraste
(Kaija Saariaho & Jean-Baptiste Barrière, electronics)
Naïve Montaigne MO 782154 | Amazon
  • …a reborn Debussian refinement and languor with an occasional steely glint – a blend flautist Camilla Hoitenga achieves very naturally in her polished but also very vital performances (5-Stern CD-Kritik, L’aile du songe),
    BBC Magazine, December 2002
  •  …a phenomal soloist…her spectrum of color ranges from full flute sound to modulating breath noises that refer to the aesthetic of the Japanese bamboo flute.
    Neue Zürcher Zeitung,  5.3.03
  • The performance is simply breathtaking. (CD-Kritik, L’aile du songe),
    Fanfare, May/June 2003
  • The “pièce de résistance”is without a doubt L’aile du songe…enormously difficult for the soloist, but well-mastered by Camilla Hoitenga. One admires the long breath and the intimate understanding that she brings to this work which is dedicated to her. (5-Stern Kritik der Saariaho CD L’aile du songe)
    La Scena Musicale, Vol. 8. Nr. 6, 2003

PRIVATE GARDENS, 1997

Kaija Saariaho
NoaNoa” for flute and electronics
Ondine (ODE 906-2)

  • Camilla Hoitenga achieves a delightfully fragrant harmony between her instrument and the electronics.
    BBC Magazine, Oktober 2001
  • …”Noa Noa”, porté par la flute virtuose et sensible de Camilla Hoitenga…
    Diapason, Oktober 2001
  • The interpretations of the soprano Dawn Upshaw, the flutist Camilla Hoitenga, the cellist Anssi Karttunen and the percussionist Florent Jodelet are exemplary.
    Phono-Spektrum,  4.3.1998

 

Articles

Articles

ARTICLES

CAMILLA HOITENGA – A VERSATILE FLUTIST

BY KATHLEEN WEIDENFELLER, AMERICAN FLUTIST LIVING IN FINLAND.

Camilla Hoitenga says that if she had to use one word to sum up her career, it would be ‘interesting!’. ‘Any time I’ve tried to actually ‘plan’ part of my career, it’s never really worked out. I’ve always just followed what interested me’ she says ‘and then the teachers and opportunities just seemed to fall into place’. Following her interests has lead Camilla to work with many of the major composers of our time, collaborations with important visual artists, concerts in a wide variety of venues, and sharing her knowledge and energy with young flutists all over the world.
 
Camilla started playing the flute at age 8, when her family lived in Pennsylvania, but they soon moved to Michigan, and Camilla ended up changing teachers 4 times before the age of 13. She can’t help but think that this might have contributed to her openness towards new and different ideas.
 
It was very clear after high school that music and flute were what she wanted to study, but her parents said no to Julliard.  ‘They wanted to be sure that I had a good liberal arts education. Their idea was that I probably wouldn’t go back later and study philosophy, history, etc. My mother also wanted me to have a degree in education to ‘fall back on’. Camilla said she couldn’t see herself teaching a room full of children, and didn’t think education needed someone who was ‘falling back’, so while she did attend Calvin College, she did keep flute as her major. Looking back she’s very glad about that. ‘Calvin was a good school, with good professors. I received a very good, well-rounded liberal arts education. And my parents sent me to summer music camps, like Aspen where I got to study with Albert Tipton, and keep up with what the ‘conservatory’ flute students were doing.’ (…)

INTERVIEW WITH PAT SPENCER

Pat Spencer: Tell us about your program: how did you choose these pieces for the NYFC 

listeners? What considerations will you have as you decide on the order of
the works? Why do these pieces fit together?

Camilla Hoitenga: When I came off the stage after playing my “Savage Aural Hotbed” program at the NFA convention in Nashville last year, Jayn Rosenfeld introduced herself and various NY flutists (you were also there, Pat) to me and said (exclaimed) “we want you to play this program for the flute club in New York!”. So that was easy!

I had chosen the pieces for NFA mostly on the basis of my relationship to the pieces and composers, i.e. that that I both liked the pieces, and that they were either written for me or I had worked closely with the composer. I thought that that would be the best way of making a distinctive program in the context of all the great music presented at a convention.

PS: You have worked with some of today’s most exciting composers, especially
of course Kaija Saariaho and Karlheinz Stockhausen, but also many others.
Can you tell us what you consider the biggest musical “plus” of working
closely with composers of our own time?

CH: The biggest plus is being part of the creative process, whether during the actual writing or in being the first to interpret the finished score, of being able to explore various musical languages and worlds while having “direct access” to the source.

(…)