Recorders Galore

Monday night I attended a concert of recorder music played by 3 great recorder virtuosi, Rachel Begley, Daphna Mor, and Reine-Marie Verhagen. Rachel and Daphna live here in the NY area and Reine-Marie is from The Netherlands. They played a concert of canons and counterpoint that spanned six centuries. Very interesting selection of repertoire played beautifully. I especialy liked the earlier music played on the earlier recorders. Ever since I heard the sound of the Renaissance recorder, I've loved it, and prefer its sound to the later, baroque recorder; but honestly, both sound lovely. I've also heard the early recorder referred to as the Ganassi recorder, no doubt named after Silvestro Ganassi who wrote La Fontegara, a recorder tutorial from the 16th century.

I was particularly impressed by the piece Ah Robin, gentle Robin by William Cornish (c1468-c.1523). The live acoustics paired with the thoughtful playing made for a sort of halo effect in the sound. Everything reverberated and the sound hung in the air at times...it was just beautiful. The ensemble's intonation was really good, too.

It was nice to see Rachel, with whom I am going to do some Medieval music with in the near future. It was also good to see Reine-Marie, who I first met at the SFEMS Baroque Workshop years ago, and more recently saw again at the Amherst Early Music Festival, where I was the assistant to the Director of the Baroque Academy for a few years (2002-2004), as well as doing some accompanying and teaching. I enjoyed my time assisting the faculty during those three summers, and Reine-Marie was particularly nice. She asked if I would be back this year, and I couldn't say one way or another whether that would be the case. I would like to go back again at some point, especially if I could teach or coach chamber music.

A few comments on the church, the Church of Our Lady of Peace on E. 62nd: what a wonderful space! Everything sounded great, really nice acoustics. Very pretty inside, too.