Marion Verbruggen

This is a delightful, inventive, witty, charming, enchanting, inspiring disc. In the Verbruggen disc, only four of the six sonatas appear together, plus one other trio sonata (BWV 1031). Perhaps Ms. Verbruggen thought that BWV 526 and 528 did not translate well to the recorder. In any event, the recorder and the harpsichord are outstanding here, as is the recording quality. Highest recommendation.

If only for his melodic genius, Handel would have been forever acknowledged as one of history's greatest composers. These delightful sonatas for recorder provide abundant evidence to support that claim, and Marion Verbruggen's warm, resonant recorder and brilliant flute prove the perfect partners for bringing these rarely heard pieces to life.

Marion Verbruggen is known for her magnetic performances, which demonstrate not only her skills as a recorder player, but also her understanding of the repertoire. She makes playing the recorder look effortless, switching easily between the tenor-, alto-, and soprano-voiced instruments during any recital or concert. She can also play florid ornaments, crisp accents, and smoothly liquid passages while maintaining ideal breath control. Verbruggen adds subtlety of shading and vibrancy to her music, having what one reviewer called a "flip sense of articulation."

Much of Bach's music is abstract enough that it can easily be arranged for new instrumental combinations, and often was by the composer himself. The music for unaccompanied violin and for unaccompanied cello forms an exceptional case; the sonatas and partitas for solo violin were part of a long tradition of virtuoso violin music to which Bach was making a conscious contribution, and the six suites for solo cello were written as extensions of the ideas in the violin pieces. Transferring the cello suites to a solo recorder, which is incapable of executing many details of the cello scores, is thus something Bach probably wouldn't have countenanced. ..

The recorders heyday was the early Baroque period. In fact, until the 18th Century the recorder was known simply as flauto (flute), while the instrument we today call the flute bore the specific name flauto traverso (transverse flute), a confusion in terminology that has often led to compositions addressed to the recorder (flauto) being performed on modern flute. Der Fluyten Lust-Hof by Jacob Van Eyck is the most extensive collection of music for a solo wind instrument by a single composer, and a large portion of this set is devoted to a selection of highlights from this monumental work. Although written for amateur players, the compositions attest to the high standard of musicianship in Utrecht, with technical demands that are challenging even by modern standards. The recorders tonal purity and exceptional blend in ensemble makes it marvelously suited for adaptations of music originally written for other instrumental combinations. Examples from the early Italian repertoire include the Palestrina ricercar, capriccios by Frescobaldi and canzonas by Gabrieli, Merula and Trabaci.

Over the past three or four decades early music has changed from elitist and hardly known to being widely performed and appreciated. With the growing popularity of early music the recorder has emancipated from that rather ill-reputed “instrument to introduce children to music” to a serious musical instrument in its own right. Several highly successful recorder ensembles and soloists are proof of this change.

This cd contains one of the best performances of Telemann's well-known A Minor Suite for recorder and strings. Sarah Cunningham is a fine recorder player, and Monica Hugget plays first violin and directs the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, who play on period instruments. The strings play with very little or no vibratto, which might sound a bit dry to some listeners, but the elegance and precision of this band will win over many others. The A Minor Concerto for recorder is also given an enjoyable performance, but the remaining pieces, a Suite in D for Viola da gamba, and a Sinfonia in F for recorder and gamba are less pleasing, mainly because the gamba playing of Marion Verbruggen is somewhat less than exciting.

Every piece on this Newberry release is temperate and balanced, just as the musical culture and domestic society were in the countries now known as the Netherlands and Belgium.
While a certain blandness creeps into the instrumental selections, pieces by Nicholas a Kempis, Tarquinio Merula and John Coperario reveal a sharper, more personal profile. Most striking are the vocal-instrumental esoterica–the brightly serene "Je veux mon doux Sauveur" by an anonymous composer and the richly embellished "Avertisti faciem" by Constantijn Huygens, both works sweetly sung by the remarkable countertenor Drew Minter.

When the German transverse flute found its place in Italy and was accepted by the Catholic church as a suitable replacement for the proscribed recorder, Antonio Vivaldi took to it with great enthusiasm. His flute concertos mark a point of departure, coming after he had completed his 40 bassoon concertos and virtually all of the string concertos. Although some of these pieces were reworkings of material previously composed for recorder, Vivaldi came to capitalize on new techniques he learned from Ignazio Siber, the flute instructor at the Ospedale della Pietà. Of Vivaldi's 15, the 7 flute concertos presented here were freshly written for the instrument.