Advanced Recorder Technique

'Advanced Recorder Technique' is intended for advanced players of the alto recorder who are seeking rigorous practise material for developing their instrumental and musical skills. The aim is that within the purely technical material the player will be able to discover and transform the musical parameters of sound, movement, tension/relaxation, and from that learn to deal musically with the individual technical elements (scales, arpeggios, trills etc.). In accordance with the requirements of the recorder's original literature the exercises are intended mainly for the alto recorder. However, numerous recent arrangements of early baroque violin music for soprano recorder, which have become an established part of the repertoire, have necessitated the serious treatment of this instrument, too. A number of the chapters can therefore be played not only on the alto but transposed for the soprano recorder as well. The term 'technique' should not be misunderstood: the objectives of the exercises are musical expression, inspiration, emotion and creative note-shaping. This two-volume method deals with four aspects of recorder playing: finger and tonguing technique as well as breathing and sound production.

Gudrun Heyens was born in 1950 and now lives in Duisburg / Germany. Between 1968 and 1973 she studied recorder and violin with Günther Höller and Franz-Josef Maier and between 1973 and 1981 was a founding member of Musica Antiqua Köln with whom she has made numerous radio broadcasts and performed extensively both in Germany and internationally. She received the German Prize for Recording in 1977 for 'Concerti per Flauto', a recording with Musica Antiqua Köln of concertos by Sarri, Valentine, Barbella and Mancini. Gudrun Heyens has been a member of the Marais Consort since 1984 and professor of recorder at the Folkwang-Hochschule since 1985. She is currently President of the German branch of the European Recorder Teachers' Association (ERTA).