Recorders charm Miller with Baroque pieces

The recorder—in all of its cheap yellow plastic glory—may be the first instrument that many American students learn to play. But few students have chosen to pursue playing the instrument professionally.

These few, however, include the internationally acclaimed Flanders Recorder Quartet. On Feb. 20, the group will make its Miller Theatre debut with “Circa 1600” at the American Academy of Arts & Letters as part of Miller’s ongoing Early Music Series. Founded in 1987, the quartet has played more than 1,500 concerts in 42 countries and has toured the U.S. twice a year for the past four years.

Part of FRQ’s success may be owed to each member’s mastery of a relatively obscure instrument, but most of its success is likely a product of the excitement with which the group approaches its playing, as well as the group’s unique musical programs.

“Circa 1600” will provide a sample of the music that held sway during the Baroque era in Europe from the end of the 16th to the middle of the 18th century. The period was characterized by a shift that took place from purely vocal to instrumental music and the emergence of much bolder musical expression.

Despite the recorder’s massive popularity during the Baroque era, though, pieces written solely for the recorder are hard to find. “We think that the biggest composers did not write for the recorder,” Tom Beets, who has played with FRQ for the past four years, said.

So how does the group find music to play? For a recorder quartet, there is just no easy way, so flexibility is key. Two of the pieces in the “Circa 1600” program were originally written for organ, one for voice, another for keyboard, and the rest for various collections of instruments (though no groups of recorders). Quartet members must arrange nearly their entire repertoire from music that they can never be 100 percent sure was ever written with the recorder in mind.

It might be argued, then, that the quartet’s performance couldn’t possibly be authentically Baroque. Columbia music professor Susan Boynton, who specializes in early monastic vocal music, seriously objects to this accusation. “‘Authenticity’ is a term that’s been seriously misused,” she said. Instrumentalists during the Baroque era were flexible too, Boynton said, and would adapt music for their instruments just as the Flanders Quartet has. A successful period performance serves as more than a note-for-note reproduction of the work. “The spirit of it [the music] must be preserved in a modern transcription,” Boynton said.

To stay close to the piece’s original style, the quartet draws from a private collection of 67 recorders, and often borrows more, to choose those that are as period­—and musically—appropriate as possible. Though the recorder is known for its lack of dynamic range, this does not limit expressiveness in a performance, especially, as Beets said, if each of the four players pays close attention to the nuances of his playing and to one another.

The location for the performance has also been specially chosen for the quartet. According to Miller Theatre’s Director Melissa Smey, the auditorium at the American Academy of Arts & Letters is more acoustically appropriate for early music than Miller Theatre.

When the Flanders Recorder Quartet takes the stage on Saturday, even if the notes and the instruments and the concert hall aren’t exactly as they were nearly 400 years ago, the spirit of the Baroque era may very well leap through time and space to reach audience members all in one piece.