A Breath of New Life

In 2012 Saskia Coolen discovered in the Historical Museum in Den Briel, the head joint of an alto recorder, made by the Dutch 18th century instrument maker Engelbert Terton. She brought in the recorder builder and expert Jan Bouterse who cleaned and restored the joint. He suggested that there might well be other playable recorders to be found in private collections. In the years since, Coolen's research has yielded six forgotten eighteenth-century recorders: five altos and a sopranino. On this album she plays these rediscovered recorders, together with gambist Rainer Zipperling and harpsichordist Patrick Ayrton, in eighteenth-century music by De Fesch, Nozeman, Van Wassenaer and other contemporaries.