Product Reviews: Fantasia su vari temi dell'Ernani di Verdi for Flute and Piano, Op. 40

Marini's Fantasia is an enjoyable and challenging piece, which would make an intriguing addition to an advanced flautists' repertoire. The piano score and flute part are both attractively presented, although the edition leaves quite a lot to be desired.

Firstly, the flute part has been engraved with little regard to page turns. These are clearly going to be a problem in a piece in which the flute is playing almost continuously, but no attempt seems to have been made to provide a solution to this.

Secondly, there are several low Bs in the flute part. The piece was apparently written for a type of flute, then popular in Italy, which goes down to the A below middle C. Not everyone has a low B extension, so It might be helpful to warn players of this fact and to provide alternatives when the note occurs. Bar 154 begins with a series of four harmonics, starting on low B. These are presumably octave harmonics. Again, an explanatory note might be helpful.

Finally, the music contains quite a few errors. Several bars are incorrectly notated and bar 86 begins with a wrong note (a crotchet D, which should be C a tone lower).