Author Topic: Recorder music  (Read 12089 times)

Wowbagger

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Recorder music
« on: 26 August, 2020, 10:46:04 pm »
A comment by one of our fine forummers prompted me to start this thread.

There's a wealth of wonderful music for recorders. Sadly, things go in and out of fashion and recorders, where they have been scored in baroque orchestras, have frequently been replaced by flutes. I've been watching a lot of videos by Sarah Jeffery, who is a virtuoso recorder player and makes a lot of videos. Some of them are a bit frivolous, but on the whole I think she've very good and makes stuff quite approachable.

Here she is playing a Bach trio, originally written for organ.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgXHa7WVGs4
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FifeingEejit

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Re: Recorder music
« Reply #1 on: 26 August, 2020, 11:19:48 pm »
I thought that would be me making the obvious jab.

I can also do inversely snobby about violins and fiddles...

I'd have a listen but the link doesn't show in Tapatalk and I'm currently severely reduced in the hearing department.

Sent from my BKL-L09 using Tapatalk

Wowbagger

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Re: Recorder music
« Reply #2 on: 26 August, 2020, 11:42:31 pm »
Apologies. I meant to link to the video which I failed to do, instead linking to your quote. I've corrected it now.
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Re: Recorder music
« Reply #3 on: 27 August, 2020, 09:08:16 am »
Love me a bit of Michala Petri, personally. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFV-zW-dn9g

I've got a couple of Dolmetsch rosewood recorders (a descant and a treble) that had been sitting unplayed for 20-odd years before my parents found them tucked away in a wardrobe in their spare room.  Although I'm nowhere near as good as I was when I was in my teens, it's amazing how the muscle memory comes back and I can play some Corelli and Bach pieces without music.  What's more, I can figure out melodies, for example, to various Christmas carols that I've never played, without sheet music (transposing into an easy key!), only occasionally messing up and finding I need an extra note or so at the bottom or top!

nicknack

  • Hornblower
Re: Recorder music
« Reply #4 on: 27 August, 2020, 09:55:43 am »
I haven't listened to much recorder music lately. I do have a few recordings lurking on lps, cds and on hard drive - mostly by Frans Bruggen.

I have a bunch of various plastic ones from sopranino to tenor. The Yamaha treble's not bad. The only wooden one is a Mollenhauer descant.
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Wowbagger

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Re: Recorder music
« Reply #5 on: 27 August, 2020, 10:38:55 am »
We have a couple of good recorders. Jan has a Moeck alto which we bought second-hand years ago and at the time I'm sure we were told it was pear wood. I have found some very similar items on ebay and they are all described as maple. That's a Rottenburgh imitation. Mine is a gorgeous tenor in bubinga.

I have never really learned the alto fingering and I think it's a great shame that we don't treat the alto and bass as transposing instruments and just write all the music a 4th lower than it sounds. The alto stuff would fit on the stave better as well as removing the need for mental gymnastics whilst playing. I'm still at the stage of "that's written as an E so I play the fingering of a B."
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Mr Larrington

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Re: Recorder music
« Reply #6 on: 27 August, 2020, 10:41:31 am »
Just as long as it's not sapient pear wood.
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Re: Recorder music
« Reply #7 on: 27 August, 2020, 10:49:42 am »
Mrs C has a wooden tenor, stored away somewhere, that sounds lovely. Very mellow.
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Re: Recorder music
« Reply #8 on: 27 August, 2020, 11:18:44 am »
Sarah Jeffrey is great - really enjoy her videos. Lucie Horsch is excellent too.

I'm not really a recorder player, but have managed to amass a menagerie of plastic instruments from garklein to bass (everyone needs a garklein in their life - how else do you play music for dogs?).

Re: Recorder music
« Reply #9 on: 27 August, 2020, 11:25:48 am »
I have a full set, including a wooden bass which has a really lovely tone, once it (and its player) are properly warmed up.

I had to google garklein- I've always called it a piccolo?

Re: Recorder music
« Reply #10 on: 27 August, 2020, 11:28:08 am »
I have never really learned the alto fingering and I think it's a great shame that we don't treat the alto and bass as transposing instruments and just write all the music a 4th lower than it sounds. The alto stuff would fit on the stave better as well as removing the need for mental gymnastics whilst playing. I'm still at the stage of "that's written as an E so I play the fingering of a B."
Alto (you say alto, I say treble) fingering is very similar to the clarinet, which I played as a yoof.  Nonetheless, having got to a reasonable-ish standard (working towards Grade 6 when I was 11 or 12) on the descant, it blew my mind to start learning the treble and I also do/did the fingering equivalence mental gymnastics...

Re: Recorder music
« Reply #11 on: 27 August, 2020, 11:31:40 am »
I can do either descant or treble fingering- but like everything else, I'm now pretty rusty and warming up & getting into the groove takes longer than I have patience for. An annual carol session is hardly regular practise.

Wowbagger

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Re: Recorder music
« Reply #12 on: 27 August, 2020, 02:54:16 pm »
A large parcel was waiting for me when I came back from my bike ride. They are all things of great loveliness and I have to make a decision. Well, two decisions really as I have to decide if I can which is the best of the three. To my surprise, the grenadilla (a dense, black hardwood) seems to be the least powerful of the three. I somehow expected it to be the strongest and that at the moment is in pole position to be sent back.

Shortly after I arrived home another package arrived: a load of sheet music. I think I know what I will be doing for most of the afternoon.
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rogerzilla

  • When n+1 gets out of hand
Re: Recorder music
« Reply #13 on: 27 August, 2020, 02:59:16 pm »
Most evil instrument ever invented by mankind  :demon:

(I make a small exception for "Stairway to Heaven")

Edit: I've just listened again and it sounds awful in Stairway, too. I suppose they wanted a bit of elves-and-goblins vibe.
Hard work sometimes pays off in the end, but laziness ALWAYS pays off NOW.

Wowbagger

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Re: Recorder music
« Reply #14 on: 27 August, 2020, 03:44:45 pm »
I have never really learned the alto fingering and I think it's a great shame that we don't treat the alto and bass as transposing instruments and just write all the music a 4th lower than it sounds. The alto stuff would fit on the stave better as well as removing the need for mental gymnastics whilst playing. I'm still at the stage of "that's written as an E so I play the fingering of a B."
Alto (you say alto, I say treble) fingering is very similar to the clarinet, which I played as a yoof.  Nonetheless, having got to a reasonable-ish standard (working towards Grade 6 when I was 11 or 12) on the descant, it blew my mind to start learning the treble and I also do/did the fingering equivalence mental gymnastics...
It's some time since I explored the world of recorders and descant ant treble were the terms used. Now they are mostly referred to as the soprano and alto, which I think is more logical - after all, I doubt that anyone has ever referred to a "descantino".
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Re: Recorder music
« Reply #15 on: 27 August, 2020, 04:13:23 pm »
Descant and treble are the terms I remember using, too. An SATB consort makes more sense, though!

CrazyEnglishTriathlete

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Re: Recorder music
« Reply #16 on: 28 August, 2020, 09:52:59 am »
CET Junior #2 is the recorder player in the family, and has a family of recorders from descant to bass.  Played well it's much nicer to listen to than his cello or the drums, event though he has a reasonable talent with the drums, when he can be persuaded to practice.
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Wowbagger

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Re: Recorder music
« Reply #17 on: 01 September, 2020, 05:22:57 pm »
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcvoX9Kuoj0

Very enjoyable interview between Sarah Jeffery and Michala Petri. I liked lots of things about that video, not least the magic disappearing baby, but most of all, MP's arrangement of the Bach Cello Suite. Incidentally, the recorder she'a playing is a modern Mollenhauer alto priced at about £1600.
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Wowbagger

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Re: Recorder music
« Reply #18 on: 12 September, 2020, 11:00:01 pm »
I have always loved Bach's cello suites, but I think I might love them even more now...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PAhkoATipk&ab_channel=atsusiueno

Frans Bruggen, performing in that, was appointed a professor of music at the age of 21. It was he who arranged the Bach violin sonata for alto recorder that I am currently trying to learn.
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LittleWheelsandBig

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Re: Recorder music
« Reply #19 on: 17 September, 2020, 08:39:13 pm »
Emily O’Brien is a Randonneurs USA member who has completed some tough brevets on fixed, sews some well-regarded bike bags and is a professional recorder player.

http://www.canzonet.net/about/
https://www.dillpicklegear.com/author/emily/
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Wowbagger

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Re: Recorder music
« Reply #20 on: 18 September, 2020, 05:57:37 pm »
Wow! That Mollenhauer Helder recorder she mentions looks really lovely, at an appropriate price.

https://www.mollenhauer.com/en/catalog/recorders/series-overview/helder/altor-recorder-helder-grenadilla-detail#content

You do realise that n+1 also applies to recorders, and they take up  a lot less space than bicycles...
Quote from: Dez
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Wowbagger

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Re: Recorder music
« Reply #21 on: 28 September, 2020, 09:15:05 pm »
I've been very familiar with the Brandenburg Concertos for over 50 years, since Brandenburg no 1 was one of my O level set works. I must have been about 14 when I bought all 6 on LP.

I recently watched & listened to a Youtube video of no 4, which is scored two recorders, amongst other things. I'm pretty sure that the recordings I bought in the 1960s had transverse flutes playing the recorder parts: playing on appropriate-period instruments hadn't really caught on at that stage, since it was only very shortly after John Eliot Gardiner conducted a performance of the Monteverdi Vespers at Cambridge, using period instruments as far as he could.

I downloaded the recorder parts for Brandenburg no 4 and I've been playing them. Most of the second (slow) movement is at a speed at which I can play them. It really is like magic suddenly to be able to reproduce something with which I have been so familiar for so long. I'd love to play in an orchestral performance.

Which reminds me of a conversation I had with my brother a few months ago (pre-Covid). He had to curtail the phone call because he was about to drive out to Bishops Castle where he was going to meet a few fellow musicians and spend the afternoon playing his flute in an ensemble. I said how envious I was of him being able to do that, and saying that playing music wth other people was the real thing, whereas being a pianist was more like wanking, a comment he found quite amusing.

Of course, there are works in which the piano takes part in a chamber ensemble, but in general the demands made of the pianist are very strong, and in general such pieces are very difficult.
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sprogs

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Re: Recorder music
« Reply #22 on: 29 September, 2020, 04:50:29 pm »
Many (many many many !) years ago I saw a group called "Red Priest" performing the four seasons. The tenor recorder player was truly superb. I'll see if I can find a video.

Wowbagger

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Re: Recorder music
« Reply #23 on: 10 October, 2020, 08:41:00 pm »
I've started learning the flute part from J. S. Bach's "Badinerie", from the B minor orchestral suite.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsiqjGgwuU8&ab_channel=NetherlandsBachSociety

I am finding the recorder part rather easier than the piano accompaniment at this stage! I'd like to knit together videos of me playing each part.
Quote from: Dez
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Wowbagger

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Re: Recorder music
« Reply #24 on: 21 October, 2020, 07:13:42 pm »
Quote from: Dez
It doesn’t matter where you start. Just start.