Description
John Turner and The Manchester Chamber Ensemble perform a widely varied selection of repertoire for recorder and string quartet from the beginning of the twenty-first century. Among the composers featured are the late Antony Hopkins, and John McCabe who died early in 2015.
The more substantial works on this disc show that composers can write for the recorder in a more serious context, despite its well-known limitations of dynamic inflexibility and limited range, successfully exploiting those characteristics to produce music of depth and emotion.
Other works on the recording are individual responses to the nature of the instrument, ranging from the quirkiness of modern jazz and minimalism to a well-known folk-tune transmuted into a heartfelt small tone poem, and the playfulness and circus humour of deft changes of different sizes of recorder.
Personnel: John Turner (recorder), The Manchester Chamber Ensemble