As we approach the Christmas holiday I thought I’d share another of my occasional recorder playlists for you to explore. Once again, I’ve spent some time exploring my own CD collection for inspiration, as well as noting some of the gems YouTube and my various music streaming services spontaneously offer up to me.
As you already know, I enjoy an eclectic mix of music and while all of my recommendations today include the recorder, some of them aren’t necessarily repertoire you might immediately associate with our favourite instrument! There should be something for everyone and hopefully these tracks may inspire you to explore further to widen your own listening habits.
Happy listening!
John Dowland - Lachrimae Pavan (Flow my Tears)
The Flautadors Recorder Quartet - Cynthia's Revels (First Hand 2015)
You may well be familiar with John Dowland’s melancholic lute song, Flow my Tears, or perhaps his consort version, Lachrimae Pavan. This achingly beautiful melody became very well known and has been used in compositions by countless other composers. Jacob van Eyck wrote two sets of variations upon the melody which were published in his collection Der Fluyten Lusthof in 1644. One can imagine how doleful they must have sounded, echoing off the walls of Utrecht Cathedral as van Eyck played them to passersby in the churchyard. In this beautiful recording The Flautadors have chosen to combine Dowland’s music with van Eyck’s divisions, creating a weaving line above the sonorous harmonies.
Colin Touchin - Manchester Welcome
Three Teacher's Recorder Orchestra, conducted by Colin Touchin, 2008.
The death of Colin Touchin this autumn was a sad moment for the recorder world and I wanted to share one of his pieces with you to remember him. Colin was a friend and mentor to me for many years, and well known in the recorder world for both his compositions and conducting. I worked with Colin for nearly a decade as part of the tutoring team for the National Youth Recorder Orchestra and learnt a lot from his precise and economical conducting style. Watching this video reminded me of some the conducting techniques I learnt from Colin. All conductors ‘borrow’ ideas from each other and I fondly recall a moment in a rehearsal where Colin commented that the tenors missed their entry because he hadn’t twitched his elbow. We all chuckled, thinking that was preposterous, but when he gave a twitch on the second try they miraculously came in, bang on time! That taught me an important lesson about the importance of clear gestures when conducting and I’ll miss the opportunity to learn more from Colin in the future.
Manchester Welcome was the second time Colin had composed a piece for a Society of Recorder Players national festival. The first piece, Staffordshire Festival, came in 1991 and had no contrabass part because such large instruments were still relatively rare then. Fast forward to 2003 and we had a vast hall of players, including a phalanx of contras and Colin was able to make use of these enlarged forces to create a full scale orchestral piece. The excitement was palpable, enhanced by the fact that we were playing in the hall of the Manchester school where Colin had learnt the recorder as a youngster.
J.S.Bach / Benedetto Marcello Oboe Concerto BWV 974
Simon Borutzki, Lea Rahel Bader, Magnus Andersson & Laute Clemens Flick - Bach all’ italiano (Klanglogo 2016)
I first encountered Marcello’s Oboe Concerto in D minor as a teenager, when a college friend of mine performed it in a concert, and its haunting melody has been a firm favourite ever since. the film director Sydney Pollack was evidently a fan too, as it appears in the soundtrack of his film The Firm - a solitary piece of orchestral music in a score that’s otherwise entirely played on the piano.
Even in the 18th century, Marcello’s music was already being borrowed for other purposes. J.S.Bach chose several concertos by Italian composers and arranged them for solo harpsichord. It’s this version which German recorder player Simon Borutzki has used to create his own interpretation for recorder. You may recall we saw also Simon in action in my last Sounding Pipes playlist, conducting the Berlin Recorder Orchestra in a Rossini Overture.
Lennox Berkeley Sonatina
Jill Kemp & Aleksander Szram - English Recorder Works (Music & Media 2013)
We take the recorder’s huge repertoire of contemporary music for granted these days, but during the early days of the instrument’s revival new works were hard to come by. In 1938 one of Edgar Hunt’s recorder students, Manuel Jacobs, wrote the following in an article in the Musical Times under the pen name Terpander:
“It cannot be too much insisted that if the health and strength of the present recorder revival is to be maintained, the revival itself must be recognised as essentially a contemporary phenomenon and contemporary music must be written for it. Seen and treated purely as an object of antiquarian interest, it will die the speedy death that all movements which reply too exclusively and too morbidly on the past and its associations deserve to die. Actually the recorder is less remarkable for its ‘antiquity’ than for the accommodating way it fits into its 20th century surroundings.”
Jacobs was obviously a very persuasive character and his efforts resulted in works for the recorder by many young composers of the day, including Lennox Berkeley, Stanley Bate, Christian Darnton, Peggy Glanville-Hicks, Eve Kisch, Walter Leigh, Peter Pope, Alan Rawsthorne and Franz Reisenstein. Many of these works are still in print today, although some have aged better than others.
Lennox Berkeley composing at the piano
Lennox Berkeley’s Sonatina received an informal first performance by Carl Dolmetsch at the London Contemporary Music Centre in June 1939, just twenty years after Arnold Dolmetsch made the first modern recorder. Earlier in 1939 Dolmetsch gave the first of his Wigmore Hall recitals and, frustrated by the dearth of modern music, he composed a Theme and Variations of his own to fill this gap in the programme.
At his second recital there, in November 1939, the Berkeley took pride of place in the concert, receiving its public premiere, starting a pattern Dolmetsch would continue for five decades. At his annual Wigmore Hall recital, Dolmetsch would perform newly composed repertoire - some 32 pieces in all. I went to his final recital at the Wigmore Hall in October 1989, where he premiered Variants on a Tune of HH - a reference to the composer Herbert Howells.
I’ve always had a soft spot for Berkeley’s Sonatina. It may be one of the earliest 20th century works for recorder, but it’s stood test of time and remains a great piece of music. There may be moments which show a less than perfect understanding of the instrument (top F sharps and occasional unsympathetic chromatic passages) but I think we can forgive these at a time when the recorder’s capabilities weren’t yet well understood. I’ve shared the first movement below, but you can listen to the whole work, along with other works by Malcolm Arnold, Gordon Jacob and York Bowen here.
Guus Haverkate - The Marmalade Cat
Photo by Helen Hooker
Just this week I reviewed The Marmalade Cat for The Recorder Magazine so it was fresh in my mind when I started writing today. Haverkate is a composer you may well have come across, either through his other ensemble repertoire, or perhaps his modern studies for recorder. His music often has a pictorial quality, conjuring up mental images of an ongoing storyline. The laid back big band jazz style of The Marmalade Cat makes me think of a larger than life ginger tom cat sauntering along the street on a warm day, stopping occasionally for a wash and a spot of relaxation time in the sun.
Tom Beets recorded this performance with his orchestra, Recorders Incorporated, in Wells in January 2020 and I just love its laid back feel and Tom’s relaxed conducting style. Grab a cuppa, turn up the volume, sit back and enjoy some chilled out recorder jazz!
John Williams - The Cantina Band from Star Wars
My final choice today should put a spring in your step, although I must warn you may be humming the tune for days! This is one of those videos thrown up for me by YouTube and it immediately made me smile. Orlan Charles is a Brazilian recorder player and flautist who performs a huge variety of music, as well as arranging for many different types of ensemble. This arrangement of the Cantina Band music from Star Wars is one he recorded four years ago and it showcases his recorder playing, body percussion and some choreography too. As someone who spends a lot of time creating multitrack videos I can’t help feeling I need to raise my game after watching this!
So there you have six pieces to entertain and inspire you - some serious, some much less so! I hope you enjoyed them - drop a comment below to let me know which one’s your favourite. While you’re doing that, why not let me have any suggestions for future editions of Sounding Pipes. Perhaps you want more recorder orchestra music or repertoire from a particular period? I’m open to ideas and I’m all ears!