Favourites, Shelf Discovery: Michala Petri

The trouble with first impressions, as they say, is that they often become a lasting impression - and in the UK at least no instrument has suffered more from this than the humble recorder, which for many a British school-child will have been their first introduction to music and music-making. Despite my juvenile tribulations with the instrument, the recorder is a good place to start, as the idea of blowing through a piece of wood to produce sounds is older than history itself; examples can be found in virtually every human culture, from South America to China, but in Europe the recorder as we would recognise it today first appeared in the Middle Ages, its popularity growing as the Renaissance flowered (King Henry VIII amassed a personal collection of nearly fifty). By the time of the Baroque interest in concerto and sonata form, the recorder's clear, bright sound was the perfect solo instrument.

For recordings of this repertoire there has been no finer player over the past thirty or so years than the Danish recorder-player Michala Petri – her recordings of the standard baroque fayre are simply outstanding, and richly deserving of the many awards and rosettes they've garnered over the years. However, I'd argue that her most interesting contributions to the discography are those which find her at her most adventurous - either in her choice of musical partners (as when collaborating with legendary jazz musician Keith Jarrett back in the early 90s with recordings of Bach & Handel), or when featuring the scores of commissions from all four corners of the globe that have emerged from her own record label OUR Recordings over the past few years.

Released in 1992, those recordings of Bach & Handel with Jarrett remain remarkable performances to this day – it is perhaps clichéd to say that Jarrett brings an 'improvisatory' approach to the music, but what stands out to my ears is the extraordinary level of expressiveness he manages to find on the harpsichord (not an instrument to which this epithet is often applied). Petri matches him note for note, with particular highlights being the extreme and seemingly effortless virtuosity displayed in the second movement of Bach's fourth sonata (BWV 1033) and the deeply felt opening movement of the sixth sonata (BWV1035). The Handel performances share the same characteristics, even if the more galant style doesn't offer quite the same musical possibilities. Her remakes of the Bach sonatas (this time with the added bonus of a gamba continuo played by Hille Perl) feature harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani, a musician who shares her love of the old and the new; these accounts might be described as more 'conventional' but are no less musically rewarding.

The fact that Bach's sonatas were written for the transverse flute show that even by the end of the Baroque period the recorder's heyday had faded - and by the time that orchestral standards were being set later in the eighteenth century, the instrument had virtually disappeared from the collective classical consciousness. It would take a revival of interest in music of the instrument's golden age under the advocacy of early music pioneers like Frans Brüggen to restore the recorder to the concert-hall - but rather than remain in a baroque bubble Michala Petri has burst open her instrument's horizons musically and geographically. Following Phileas Fogg in travelling round the world in (not quite) eighty recorder concertos, she's become something of a musical petri dish for the instrument and has continued her tradition of commissioning new works for the instrument (something which she has been doing since the age of six).

The simplicity of the recorder, and the global commonality of its method of musical production, mean that it is an instrument ideally suited to the suitcase. Highlights from Petri's world tour include exploring English mysticism in Richard Harvey's Concerto Incantato, and the equally ancient world of China in Chen Yi's Ancient Chinese Beauty - alongside transcriptions of concertos originally written for the bamboo flute, with Petri proving she's equally adept with music written for both Western and Eastern flutes. Heading across the Pacific finds the Old World meeting the New, and the Baroque given American pep in Anthony Newman's Concerto for Recorder, Harpsichord and Strings.

Back in Europe, the recorder's absence from the world of the Classical and Romantic orchestra proved to be an opportunity for many post-War European composers, and Petri's musical curiosity means she's at home with either the avant-garde Günter Kochan or the prog-rock inspired Your Voice Out of The Lamb by Fabrice Bollon (which features an unlikely duet with a drum kit!). Even the greatest travellers must eventually return home, and Petri's idiosyncratic approach to the recorder is matched by her compositional compatriots, perhaps providing an insight into the Danish character itself – with Thomas Koppel's Moonchild's Dream's musical eclecticism well matched with the acerbic, yet avant-garde Chacun Son Son from Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen.

What unites these remarkably disparate and varied series of recordings is Petri's uncanny ability to tap into the full range of an instrument that's often dismissed by many as limited, either historically or geographically - by doing so she's breathed new life into a very old instrument. It is to be hoped that the new generation of recorder-players such as Tabea Debus and Lucie Horsch (whom I'm sure were inspired by Petri) continue in her path of not only presenting music that we do associate with this instrument in new and interesting ways, but also helping to create new and interesting music that we haven't yet associated with it - hopefully banishing forever the memories of many (including me!) who struggled with the instrument as a school-child!

Photo-credit: Eric Klitgaard.

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