Orchestral Excerpts
In the classical literature, the alto flute is particularly associated with the scores of Igor Stravinsky and Maurice Ravel, both of whom used the instrument's distinctive tone color in a variety of scores. It is featured in Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé, Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, Franco Alfano's opera Cyrano de Bergerac, and Sergei Prokofiev's Scythian Suite. Shostakovich used it in his operas The Gamblers (incomplete), Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (also known as Katerina Ismailova), as well as in his Symphony No. 7 (Leningrad). It also figures prominently in several movements of Gustav Holst's The Planets. It also appears in Howard Shore's music for The Lord of the Rings among many other contemporary film scores. Even before 1940 it had been used occasionally in Hollywood; early Broadway pit orchestrations using the instrument (in the hands of a "doubler") include Jerome Kern's "Music in the Air" (1932) and "Very Warm for May" (1939)—both scored by Robert Russell Bennett.
Read more about this topic: Alto Flute