Here is a treat for you! - a record that I borrowed from the Bristol record library back in 1975, and recorded on cassette tape for my own usage (except for the modern music at the end) - long since lost or broken, alas.
It has many gems featring recorder as solo, in ensemble, or as obbligato, spanning several centuries - including such songs as "Sheep may safely graze" sung by Norma Burrowes, Robert Lloyd singing "Ruddier than the cherry", Martyn Hill doing a Shakespeare song by Arne, and James Bowman's superb rendering of Esurientes from Bach's Magnificat. These are all singers that I enjoyed 'in real life over' the next few years; and indeed I once sang in a choir for which Martyn Hill was the tenor soloist.
This LP was also where I first came across that absolute gem by Bach featuring a pair of recorders, which I have twice featured on this blog.
David Munrow was an important figure in my development of appreciation for "early music", and early classical music - both through his playing of various wind instruments; and from his scholarly and educational activities on vinyl and via TV and radio. He committed suicide in his thirties, almost out-of-the-blue, apparently; but the suicide was never mentioned at the time, and I never understood why he had died so young, until several years later.
I retain a special fondness for the Treble Recorder, which has an unique, innate, plaintive and yearning quality. It was reintroduced to classical music in Germany, especially by Arnold Dolmetsch - but I always found Dolmetsch's playing to be rather constipated and lacking inspiration.
It took Munrow to 'free' the recorder from the smoke of academicism - where it now basks openly!
