Carl Dolmetsch and the Recorder Repertoire of the 20th Century

Carl Dolmetsch and the Recorder Repertoire of the 20th Century Synopsis

This title was first published in 2003. Between 1939 and 1989 the recorder virtuoso Carl Dolmetsch gave 45 concerts at the Wigmore Hall in London, all but a few with harpsichordist Joseph Saxby. The highlight of these concerts was the performance of a specially commissioned work. Many important twentieth-century composers contributed to this corpus of works, including Lennox Berkeley, York Bowen, Arnold Cooke, Gordon Jacob and Edmund Rubbra. This book is the first to explore this repertoire in depth. Each of the 'Dolmetsch' works is catalogued and discussed in detail. Drawing on much previously unexplored correspondence and manuscript scores held in the Dolmetsch Archive in Haslemere, the author places this music in the wider context of the twentieth-century recorder revival and surveys the influence these works have had on recorder music of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. His analyses of the works includes composers' programme notes, supplemented where possible with information directly from the composers.