34 Pieces for Solo Flute

This beautifully presented edition brings together 34 solo baroque pieces taken from several different collections of small pieces, such as The Delightful Pocket Companion for the German Flute, Quantz's Fantasies, Preludes and Caprices and volumes by Taillart, Blavet, Braun and others. Some of the pieces are anonymous and may been attributed elsewhere to composers such as Blockwitz, Braun or Quantz; as is typical of Rien de Reede's work, he has approached the music with respect to its historical origins, leaving materials as close as possible to the original versions and providing detailed information regarding sources and where to go to find futher information.

The pieces are intented for intermediate level players and above, and are printed clearly with well-organised layout. We have dance movements, such as allemandes and minuets, and some wonderful capriccios and bizzarria which show the level of invention in the baroque era. Articulations have been left as written, so there is scope for performers to explore their own personal approaches, and to add embellishment as appropriate. It might be fun to build new suites of pieces from these diverse movements, or to present them as standalone pieces; there are some real gems in this collection that I haven't seen elsewhere, as well as some better-known short pieces by Quantz.

The collection is a great way to dip a toe into the water of baroque repertoire, and provides a lovely variety of characters and atmospheres in the pieces. I've enjoyed playing them on traverso and C flute, and also on various sizes of low flutes; the music adapts well across the flute family and the level of difficulty makes them ideal for getting to grips with tone production on low flutes.

This is a great addition to the music library and a great way to explore solo repertoire from the baroque era.