On the origins of the recorder

Starting on the recorder when you are five, giving your first solo concert when you are nine and studying at the Conservatory at the age of twelve. Not everyone has such a gift. Lucie Horsch does. At 20, this Dutch recorder-player is still very young, but in the meantime she is already appearing on the platforms of the biggest concert halls and festivals, has signed an exclusive recording contract with Decca and has such names as Richard Egarr, Harriet Krijgh and Rolando Villazón in her address book. Horsch has the highest regard for Vivaldi. This fleet-fingered recorder-player feels completely in her element performing his virtuoso concertos, a genre that this Venetian composer more or less traced out himself and which was imitated all over Europe – not least by Bach and Telemann. It is the latter’s Double Concerto for Recorder and Traverso that Horsch will be playing, together with the equally talented Toshiyuki Shibata. In Bach’s renowned Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, this Japanese traverso-player will enter into an animated dialogue with the violin and above all the harpsichord.