Piers Adams and Howard Beach re-define the Recorder Recital.  This long-standing musical partnership has created a vast new repertoire and set new standards in virtuosity, expression and presentation. It is unique on the world stage in presenting the combination of recorder and piano as a full-scale, authentic concert medium. The duo's recitals encompass a broad spectrum of music including baroque 'standards', the romantic 'czakan' repertoire, pastoral 20th century sonatas, new commissions in myriad styles and their own transcriptions and compositions.

Selected Repertoire...

Early Music

Anon - Mediaeval Dances and Laments (1100-1400)

Castello, Fontana, Berardi, Falconiero, Salaverde et al - Canzonas and Sonatas (17th Century)

Van Eyck - Variations from Der Fluiten Lusthof (c.1650)

Handel - Recorder Sonatas, Harmonious Blacksmith Variations

Telemann - Recorder Sonatas and solo Fantasias

Bach - Recorder Sonatas (transcribed from flute and violin originals) and Preludio in E

Vivaldi - Winter (Four Seasons)

Leclair - Sonata in E minor (from violin original)

20th Century Romantic/Impressionist Music

Poulenc - Flute Sonata (transcribed for recorder)

Debussy - Syrinx

Bowen - Recorder Sonata op 121

Rubbra - Meditazione

Fulton - Scottish Suite

Berkeley - Sonatina

Swann - Rhapsody from Within

Authentic 19th Century Czakan Music

Krahmer - Variations, Polonaises, Fantasias, Sonatas etc. for recorder and piano

Hunyadi - Concert Polonaise

Heberle - Sonata Brillante

Diabelli - Operatic Fantasias

Gebauer - Recorder Sonata

Romantic Transcriptions

Chopin - Variations and Nocturne

Rachmaninov - Vocalise

Massenet - Meditation

Damare - The Lark

Saint Saens - The Swan

Donjon - Etude

Schubert - The Bee

Le Thiere - L'Oiseau du Bois

Gluck - Dance of the Blessed Spirits

von Paradies - Sicilienne

Kreisler - Schon Rosmarin, Liebesleid

Vitali - Chaconne

Kalliwoda - Morceau de Salon

Adams/Beach - The Carnival of Venice

Spanish, South American and Gypsy

Sarasate - Gypsy Airs

Monti -Czardas

Dinicu - Hora Staccato

Granados - Intermezzo

Falla - Asturiana

Ibert - Entr'acte

Godowsky - Fandango

Piazzolla - Two Tangos: Cafe 1930 and Nightclub 1960

Jazz and Rock

DC Heath - Out of the Cool

David Pugsley - Groovy or What

Roland Taylor - What Next?

Commissions and Avant Garde

Linde - Music for a Bird

Ishii - Black Intention

Bedford - Piers de Resistance

Hirose - Meditation

Shinohara - Fragmente

Gander - Dancing Shiva

Roxanna Panufnik - Eight Deadly Sins

Programme Suggestions ...

PAGANINI OF THE RECORDER

A programme focussing especially on the recently rediscovered music of 19th century recorder virtuoso, Ernst Kraehmer and his contemporaries.   Superbly extravagant, authentic recorder music from an age of romance and opulence, which forever dispells the recorder's spartan image!  

PIERS DE RESISTANCE

David Bedford's witty solo provides the title piece for this exploration of original recorder music from 1940 to the present day. An extraordinary variety of music ranging from the neo-romanticism of York Bowen to the Eastern mysticism of Maki Ishii, concluding with Adams' and Beach's own uprorious fantasia on the Carnival of Venice.

RECORDER BRAVURA

A mixed programme of virtuoso works from the baroque, romantic and modern repertoire, featuring several of Adams' and Beach's celebrated transcriptions of the works of Chopin, Rachmaninov, Granados and others, as featured on their ground-breaking album of the same title.

THE FLYING RECORDER

A special family concert of high-flying recorder music from seven centuries and several countries.   The programme includes a mediaeval Italian Jumping Dance, baroque favourites by Vivaldi (with extracts from the Four Seasons), Bach and Handel, romantic showpieces and love-songs, energetic gypsy dances and strange modern music featuring tropical rainforest birds and a deadly dancing spider!   It also incorporates Adams' and Beach's ever popular 'Musical Aviary'!

THE BAROQUE RECORDER

(WITH HARPSICHORD)

Piers Adams and Howard Beach are members of the baroque supergroup Red Priest. Their performances capture the true spirit of the baroque epoch - unbridled fantasy, creativity, virtuosity and sheer audacity.    Their programmes explore music from the sonatas and canzonas of the 17th century 'Phantasticus' school - Castello, Fontana, Uccellini, Salaverde etc. - to the high baroque sonatas of Handel, Bach, Corelli and Telemann, and occasionally beyond into the 19th and 20th centuries.

THE PIED PIPER AND THE BUDDHA

(SOLO RECORDER)

Piers Adams has made a speciality of the unusual genre of unaccompanied recorder recitals, featuring a millennium of extraordinary music: from mediaeval dances to unaccompanied Bach and Telemann to Paganini Caprices to Ishii's extraordinary Zen Buddhist masterpiece 'Black Intention'.