If your idea of a recorder concerto hasn’t progressed beyond the Baroque, “Movements” will be a revelation, for here are three large-scale works that place the instrument firmly in the 21st century. Amargòs’s Northern Concerto is astonishing for its color, brilliant orchestration, and sheer sweep. The intoxicating opening theme, the fluid mix of tumultuous and lightly textured orchestral writing, allowing the enthusiastic piping of the recorder to be heard without strain, and the sophisticated, yet earthy rhythms confer immediate, sensuous delight. Stunning clarity and an exceptionally animated performance by soloist and orchestra—a tribute to the conductor’s skill as well as to his players’ virtuoso technique—unite in a sonic spectacular. I couldn’t help but respond to Amargòs’s exuberance, especially given my fondness for splashy, exotically tinged music. Pipes and Bells, Daniel Börtz’s one-movement concerto, opens with a mysterious passage that’s followed by rhythmically charged outbursts and moments of pastoral poetry. The recorder’s soft “cuckoo, cuckoo” seems to emerge from and then recede into a mist as the music fades away. Writing about it, Hannibal explains that “Bortz responded to Michala’s wish to explore new and stronger dynamics, recently made possible thanks to some newly acquired instruments: he wrote dramatic dynamic changes and quick passages for the large and usually soft tenor recorder; conversely, the small, normally penetrating and aggressive sopranino is asked to produce soft, long-held tones. This approach affected not only the contrast between the two instruments, but also the extreme dynamics between the soloist and the orchestra, through a mixture of soft, delicate and angelic passages and loud, almost diabolical passages.” Steven Stucky’s Etudes is much more sophisticated than the titles of its movements—“Scales,” “Glides,” and “Arpeggios”—might suggest. Alternately puckish, languorous, and jaunty, it’s consistently colorful and inventive: the inspired orchestration always provides a perfect foil for Petri’s agile, atmospheric playing. In sum, this is a fabulous disc, filled with wonderful music and performances that enlarge our appreciation of the recorder’s possibilities.

Movements features three pieces that place perhaps the most humble of instruments, the recorder, in the least humble of settings, the concerto. While the idea of a recorder concerto probably conjures up images antithetical to new music, Michala Petri, the featured soloist on this disc, is out to dispel those associations. To that end, Petri commissioned three contemporary composers and gave us a disc that features compositions for her instrument all written within the 21st century.

The first of these is Joan Albert Amargós’ Northern Concerto. Amargós’ bio references jazz and flamenco traditions along with the classical, and melodic influences from those worlds pop up throughout the concerto. I can’t say that the appearances of these influences always blend cohesively, but owing to the strength of the melodies, I didn’t mind too much. It’s an undeniably drinkable piece that takes some chances pitting the recorder against the full orchestra and largely succeeds. In fact, Petri’s recording earned the piece a Grammy nomination (scroll down to category 107).

Daniel Börtz’s one-movement concerto, Pipes and Bells, takes a completely different tack, focusing on the recorder’s distinctive timbre. Particularly nice is his opening pairing of the recorder and the bass clarinet with some brass stabs thrown in for contrast. At various places in the work the titular bells ring, again offering spectral contrast with the simple profile of the recorder’s pipe. Börtz also consistently gives the recorder plenty of space. The orchestra mostly provides a textural bath, occasionally churning itself into a crashing wave.

The final concerto is Steven Stucky’s Etudes. Like most good works of that title, the piece avoids sounding like any sort study. The three movements promise scales, glides, and arpeggios respectively. Those techniques are certainly delivered, but unobtrusively and always musically. Indeed, it’s here that the recorder sounds most at home with the rest of the orchestra.

With these three clever commissions, Petri offers a convincing argument that the recorder can achieve a place outside of its historical niche. Not once on the disc do Petri and her instrument sound out of place despite the new music context and the potency of the full orchestra. In fact, I’d imagine that these concertos would work quite well on any orchestra’s program.

To get a canary to stop singing, you put a blanket over its cage; the recorder family was a whole group of instruments that had the proverbial blanket thrown over it from the time the transverse flute appeared in about 1720 until Arnold Dolmetsch built his first good recorder in 1919. Two hundred years of sleep is a long time, and the recorder’s long eclipse certainly hasn’t aided it in the development of a sizeable concerto repertoire, especially as the recorder disappeared just as the very idea of a solo concerto became common. Arch recorder virtuoso Michala Petri is helping to rectify this situation through commissioning contemporary composers to fill in the gap, and thus to gain pace on the recorder’s arch-enemy, the flute, and her Our Recordings release, “Movements”, is an outstanding example of the very good work that Petri has done on behalf of the instrument.

These are three very different concerti penned by three very carefully chosen composers; what they have in common is that they can create music that is solid and dynamic, yet is neither so sycophantic to the audience that they seem nostalgic nor so academic and dry as to seem forbidding and cold. Spanish composer Joan Albert Amargos has stepped up to the plate and hit a home run with his Northern Concerto (2005), it is dramatic, bold and exciting with plenty of appealing, even lush, musical passages—among “northern” concertos, Albert Amargos’ is perhaps the most tropical sounding ever. 

Swedish composer Daniel Bortz’ Pipes and Bells (2002) is made of somewhat tougher stuff, but is no more alienating than what one might encounter in a typical modern movie soundtrack; Pipes and Bells maintains an excellent sense of dramatic form and employs the widest range of instrumental effects here. Steven Stucky’s Etudes are a bit more rigorous and straightforward than in his usual modus operandi, and are certainly no worse for that. As one might deduce from the movement titles—“Scales”, “Glides” and “Arpeggios”—Stucky’s work is largely given over to patterns of various kinds, most of which reside in the domain of Petri. Stucky’s colorful orchestration effectively punctuates these patterns and overall, it is an intriguing, rather zany work.

Conductor Lan Shui cracks the whip and never allows the Danish National Symphony Orchestra get out of line and the recording, made by the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, is astonishingly realistic—you almost hear the percussion sounding behind your head. As one can imagine, Michala Petri is very much on her game here, easily earning and even exceeding even the accolades given her by the composers whose works are represented on this outstanding recording.

The blanket is off the cage, and in OUR Recordings’ “Movements”, the time has come for the canary to sing in the musical language of our time.