Lucie Horsch & Amsterdam Vivaldi Players - Vivaldi (2016) [Hi-Res]

If you've followed the early music scene in the 2000s and 2010s, you may have noticed the emergence of a school of really formidable recorder virtuosi from the Netherlands. These players have collectively blown away the whiny recorder sounds from the early days of the Baroque revival. You might check out any of them; Erik Bosgraaf makes a good one to start with. Lucie Horsch may not yet be at the top of this heap, but she was just 16 years old when this album appeared in 2016, and that made her not only a novelty but a possible role model, not to mention a source of sales, for the countless young people who study the recorder at school in England, the Netherlands, other European countries, and even occasionally the U.S. Sample the first movement of the Recorder Concerto in C minor, RV 441 to assure yourself of Horsch's smoothness in rapid arpeggios, and then move on to the slow movements, where she really is above average, with innate musicality and a lovely singing tone. A couple of recorder arrangements of vocal pieces work well in this regard, and a bonus is a real rarity as an encore: Jean-Jacques Rousseau's arrangement of the tune from the Spring concerto from Vivaldi's Four Seasons, apparently done as a kind of example of what the natural style in music could sound like. An entirely satisfying debut. -- James Manheim