With three full-length discs included, it may seem surprising that this set of 79 pieces for solo recorder represents merely "selected works" from the complete set called Der Fluyten Lust-Hof (The Flute's Garden of Delights), but so it is -- there are 140 pieces in all, and the whole set would require seven or eight CDs. Music of this kind was a staple of the well-off Dutch household of the late seventeenth century -- virtuosic, but within the range of the average amateur who diligently applied himself or herself. The pieces are dances, Dutch songs, tunes from Italian madrigals or cantatas, or abstract melodies, usually varied a few times; their composer was Jacob van Eyck, a Utrecht carillonneur and recorder virtuoso. The primary market for this release from Holland's "if some is good, more must be better" Brilliant label would seem to be libraries; even supercommuters might find three discs' worth of solo recorder music a bit taxing, and an excellent single-disc performance of van Eyck's recorder music by Swedish recorder player
Dan Laurin is already available. Those who are really, really into it should get this box, however; the booklet is as exhaustive as the program, delving into van Eyck (including his carillon tuning methods), the musical life of Utrecht (a great old map of the center of the old city appears), the general principles of the music, the sources and twists of each individual piece, and secondary literature; there is also an interview with the performer,
Erik Bosgraaf. He uses no fewer than 13 different recorders, each tuned to a slightly different frequency. That might irritate the pitch-sensitive, but the set as a whole does provide a thorough introduction to one kind of music that might have been wafting through the air in the scenes Vermeer painted, and there is a solitary quality of free inspiration to the music that draws you in the more you hear it.