Old or new?

The programme opens with music by the French composer Joseph Bodin de Boismortier, who was one of the first independent Baroque composers that worked without the support of a patron. He had received a special royal license from the court in Versailles to engrave, publish and sell his own music. When you hear the virtuosity of both the flute and harpsichord parts (including the special and at the time revolutionary technique of crossing the two hands), it is easy to understand how Boismortier became a very wealthy and successful businessman from selling his own music. Telemann’s Fantasia connects to Boismortier as it’s ‘a la francese’, in the French style. The opening resembles a Lully or Rameau Overture, followed by an ingenious fugue for one instrument. For the last movement of the Fantasia, Telemann seems to have taken inspiration from the sound of the musette - the typical French Baroque version of the bagpipes. Lucie and Olga, with the help of the Borletti Buitoni Trust, have commissioned a new duo piece for their combination of instruments from the Greek composer Calliope Tsoupaki, who has lived in the Netherlands since more than twenty years. Traditionally, the recorder and the harpsichord are a very common instrument combination, as in the Baroque an extensive amount of repertoire was written for them. Also, both instruments have an extensive and ever-growing list of contemporary repertoire, which was written for them independently. But somehow, not many contemporary compositions exist which are written for both instruments together. This is why it was important to Lucie and Olga to commission this new duo piece, to enrich the existing repertoire. For ‘A Song For You’, Lucie uses a special type of recorder, called the ‘voiceflute’, with a beautiful deep and warm sonority, perfect for the lyrical character of Tsoupaki’s piece. The two instruments enter into a dialogue, exchanging scales and melodies, combining the two sonorities in a very convincing way. Next, two contemporary solo pieces are juxtaposed. Olga plays the – as the title suggests - seemingly never-ending piece ‘Continuum’, for which Ligeti took inspiration from minimal music. Lucie then proceeds with Dutch composer Louis Andriessen’s piece Ende, equally inspired by minimal music but written as a short encore, for one player playing two recorders simultaneously. Calliope Tsoupaki studied composition with Louis Andriessen in The Netherlands. The programme culminates in the famous flute sonata by Johann Sebastian Bach. Its monumental shape shows the unparallelled mastery of Bach as a composer.