Anna Noakes, concerto and recording soloist with BBC Concert Orchestra and RNSO has performed at the QEH, Wigmore Hall and Purcell Room as soloist, recitalist and chamber musician as well as at many of Britain’s most respected Festivals, such as Cheltenham, Brighton, Leicester, Salisbury, City of London and Dartington. Her playing has inspired composers such as Simon Holt, Martin Yates, Cecilia McDowall, John Ashton Thomas, Dave Heath and Martin Butler to write for her. Anna has recorded numerous CD’s for Dutton, ASV, Naxos and Guild of both solo and chamber music, many of which have received Gramophone Magazine’s coveted “Critics Choice”.

Anna broadcasts for BBC Radio3 and Classic FM and works as Guest Principal Flute with the LPO, Philharmonia, RPO, the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House and ENO’s together with ECO, Northern Sinfonia, CLS, Locrian Ensemble and Britten Sinfonia. She is also in demand to record the music for Film and TV, scores that include, Kingsman, Golden Circle, James Bond, Lord of the Rings, Stardust, Hugo, Arthur, Chicken Run, Golden Compass, Black Swan, Narnia series, Harry Potter, Shrek, Da Vinci Code, Bridget Jones and Love Actually to name a few.

Professor of Flute at Trinity College of Music for seventeen years, Anna has given masterclasses for BFS, RAM, RNCM, GSMD, DIC Dublin, Cork School of Music and is currently the woodwind coach for both World Youth Orch, LSSO and Cambridge University. Anna is a founder member of the South American Folk Ensemble ‘INCA’ and was for ten years the Artistic Director of the Yoxford Arts Festival.

The inherently civilised music of the composer and pianist Jean-Michel Damase (1928–2013) reflects, to an endearing degree, the combination of subtlety, mastery and – as we hear in this collection – the inspiration and lasting high quality of wind playing in his native France. This inherent quality for long encouraged the country’s composers to write with a particularly sensitive ear for the possibilities of wind instruments – few national composers in the twentieth-century could write for such soloists and ensembles with the felicity and natural inspiration as the French exhibited.

The music of Jan Novák (1921–1984) is extraordinary and remarkable as such. However, this recording puts a kind of stamp of authenticity on it since the solo parts are played not only by pianist Karel Košárek but also by both of the composer’s daughters. While flautist Clara Nováková might have gone back in memories to the time when she was fifteen and her father dedicated the first version of Choreae vernales to her, Dora Novak-Wilmington sat on the piano stool instead of her mother, Eliška, who played the instrument as brilliantly as her husband, Jan.

In a way, this recording exudes the atmosphere of a family reunion across time. Novák’s Concerto for Two Pianos reflects his impressions of studying with Bohuslav Martinu in New York (where they visited jazz clubs together) as well as his desire for recognition from his teacher. The historical recording of the work (Jan and Eliška Novák, Czech Philharmonic, Karel Ancerl, 1957) deserves to be complemented by a representative modern recording. Concentus biiugis for piano four hands was performed in the year of its creation in the composer’s exile in Germany as a way of supporting Charter 77, an anti-regime movement in his homeland.

The first version of Choreae vernales was written in the same year in Italy and three years later Novák clothed it in the colourful attire of string orchestra. It is this nearly unknown version of the composition that is newly recorded here. The orchestra’s involvement and renowned conductor Tomáš Netopil’s distinct musicianship help the soloists to create Jan Novák’s colourful and striking musical landscape - A new recording of Jan Novák’s concertos – a family reunion across time.

Mauro Giuliani (1781-1828) was a contemporary of Schubert and one of the many Italian guitar virtuosos who had to flee his own country to get noticed. He ended up in Vienna frequently playing in the fashionable salons and contributing to the guitar becoming all the rage there. As a composer he mainly wrote for his own use: around 200 pieces in all. Many of his works are still popular today, and belong to the standard guitar repertoire. 'Composer, or rather translator of beauty'. This is how Giuliani described himself in a letter to Anton Diabelli on 24 January 1824, and it contains all the poetry and aesthetics of his music, which is quintessentially beautiful, charming, melodious and witty. This new recording presents the complete works for flute and guitar, a popular combination. Included are sets of variations on popular themes from operas, serenades and divertimenti, potpourri’s, Grand Duo’s and Marches, a veritable treasure trove of instrumental brilliance and joie de vivre.

Flutist Daniele Ruggieri completed his studies in Venice where he graduated with the highest marks under Guido Novello and subsequently in Geneva where he was awarded the first Prix de Virtuosité in the class of Maxence Larrieu, after which he built an impressive career as a soloist and ensemble player: “...Rarely will you hear the flute flutter around a concert hall in such a beautiful and playful display of virtuosity.” (M. Connolly, The Times, London). Master guitarist Alberto Mesirca is twice winner of the Golden Guitar, for the best recording of the Year. He recorded the complete guitar music by Regondi, Asencio and Sanz, and “Voces de Sefarad”, four centuries of Sephardic Songs.

Wanderlust is a voyage around the world of folk and the traditions that emerged from each countries’ unique blend of traditional music. Ranging from the rolling hills of Romania to the jagged cliffs of Newfoundland, flutist Lara Deutsch and guitarist Adam Cicchillitti have compiled a survey of folk music naturally suited to the flute and guitar. Drawing on the roots of folk traditions from around the world, the duo gracefully navigates a plethora of styles through their own unique identity as predominantly classical players.

Born in 1949, Fabio Vacchi stands among the pre-eminent Italian composers of his generation. Working primarily in the operatic field, he has had pieces staged at the Teatro alla Scala and by the Opéra Comique in Paris, the Opera de Lyon, the Maggio Musicale in Florence and the Teato Comunale in his home city of Bologna. Vacchi’s instrumental pieces have attracted similar high-profile performances. His chamber cycle Luoghi Immaginari (1987-1992), has been given across the world, including at the Salzburg Mozarteum conducted by Daniel Harding. Other pieces were commissioned by Claudio Abbado and by the Tokyo Quartet.

The most substantial piece on this new collection of his chamber pieces was commissioned by the Swedish guitarist Magnus Andersson and first performed by him in 1997 as a guitar concerto; this Quintetto Notturno Concertante dates from 2012 and is a masterful condensation of the complexities of the original, rich instrumental texture, while preserving its fleeing moods and subtly shifting changes of harmony. At the other end of this collection, Livia Rado sings Flow my Dowland, a rapturous transformation of five songs by the Elizabethan lutenist, in which the original vocal part is richly embroidered by Vacchi’s own modern reimagination of the accompanying part, scored for a small ensemble of winds, strings, vibraphone and harp, to melting and magical effect. In between come a pair of solo works, though in fact Plynn quotes Britten’s Nocturnal after John Dowland as a study of harmonics on the guitar, evoking its most dreamlike and insubstantial timbres. The earliest piece here is a Suite for flute and guitar, dating from 1971. Here, the 22-year-old Vacchi is at his most experimental in terms of both form and harmony, employing extraneous elements such as pen and paper and sending both instruments to the extremes of their register, though always with an intrinsically idiomatic sympathy. Any listener with an ear for the Italian postwar avant-garde will find this newly recorded album full of delight and discovery.