Lucie Horsch - Baroque Journey (2019) [Hi-Res]

19-year-old Dutch recorder superstar Lucie Horsch is taking us on a trip around Baroque Europe for her new album ‘Baroque Journey’, released on Decca Classics on 22nd February. Recorded with the Academy of Ancient Music, Lucie performs some of the most virtuosic music from her native Netherlands, as well as Germany, Italy, France and England.

Highlights from the album include Handel’s Arrival of the Queen of Sheba, Bach’s Badinerie, Dido’s Lament by Purcell and the world premiere recording on recorder of a concerto by Jacques-Christophe Naudot. Watch Lucie perform Arrival of the Queen of Sheba

“I thoroughly enjoyed working together with the excellent musicians of the AAM. I am very excited to share the result of our intense and inspiring collaboration” – Lucie Horsch.

Following this release, Horsch will join the Academy of Ancient Music on an international tour, with performances in the UK at the Barbican, London; the Apex, Bury St Edmunds; and West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge; and in the Netherlands at De Oosterpoort, Groningen; Parkstaad Limburg Theaters, Heerlen; De Doelen, Rotterdam; and the Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam.

Lucie is also joined by BBC Young Musician finalist Charlotte Barbour-Condini on second recorder and lutenist Thomas Dunford, described by BBC Music Magazine as “the Eric Clapton of the lute”.

Already praised for her extraordinary technique and mature musical sensibility, and with an international career rapidly growing around her, Lucie Horsch challenges any notion that the recorder is simply a ‘learning’ instrument. Lucie is eager to break down certain preconceptions: “There are five-hundred different fingerings, so you can really colour your playing with different choices. And vibrato gives yet another level of expression. Even though the recorder has a smaller dynamic range than, for example, the violin or the cello the potential for expressive detail and nuance is enormous.”

Lucie’s remarkable talent has been widely recognised at home and abroad. In 2014 she represented Holland in the Eurovision Young Musician Contest, and in 2016 she won the prestigious Concertgebouw Young Talent Award, which she was given in the presence of Sir John Eliot Gardiner. She has toured in Norway, Switzerland, Austria, Canada and Holland. In 2016, she became the first recorder player ever to sign to Decca Classics.

Lucie started learning the recorder aged only five, and was immediately enthralled. “I loved the pure, authentic sound – it’s so beautiful and vulnerable,” she says. “And because you blow directly into the instrument, everything you do, you hear immediately. For me it’s the instrument closest to the human voice.”

"A brilliant young performer" (BBC Music Magazine)

"Phenomenal technique" (Gramophone)

Lucie Horsch, recorder
Academy of Ancient Music
Bojan Cicic, conductor