Flute Sonatas (Complete)

'PICK OF THE MONTH' (BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE July 02)

'This is expressive and technical virtuosity of the highest level. An outstanding achievement' (BBC Music)

'These are performances I am going to be returning to again and again' (International Record Review)

'Beautifully executed … a perfect example of Beznosiuk's dark, sweet tone and understated musicianship. Delicious' (The Independent on Sunday)

These flute sonatas were written between about 1720 and 1741 at a time when the recorder was being superseded by the transverse flute. After about 1725 compositions specifically for or including recorder became increasingly rare, and these works are a celebration by Bach of the technical and expressive qualities and tonal colours newly available to him.

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Born in England of Ukranian/Irish descent, Lisa Beznosiuk is an internationally renowned performer on early flutes. In her dual roles as soloist and orchestral principal, she has travelled throughout Europe, the far East, and North and South America, playing a wide range of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century repertoire. She trained at the Guildhall School of Music in London where she developed a great interest and love for the wooden flute, studying with Stephen Preston, and also found herself busy playing harpsichord continuo. As a valued member of many of the best period-instrument orchestras (including the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, English Concert, English Baroque Soloists, Academy of Ancient Music, London Classical Players and New London Consort), she also features prominently on many discs of orchestral music with conductors including John Eliot Gardiner, Charles Mackerras, Roger Norrington, Simon Rattle, Christopher Hogwood, Frans Brüggen and Trevor Pinnock.
Lisa Beznosiuk is well known as a recitalist, and her regular partners include harpsichordists Paul Nicholson, Maggie Cole, Malcolm Proud and Richard Egarr; lutenists Nigel North, Paula Chateauneuf and Elizabeth Kenny; her violinist brother Pavlo Beznosiuk; flautist Stephen Preston; cellist and gambist Richard Tunnicliffe and gambist Sarah Cunningham.

Lisa enjoys teaching and is professor of early flutes at London's Royal Academy and Royal College of Music, the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, and at C.E.M.P.R. at the University of Birmingham. Her reputation as a teacher brings her students from all over the world. Her many recordings include Vivaldi's Op 10 concertos (DG), Mozart concertos (Decca), J S Bach's Triple Concerto and several versions of his Suite in B minor and Fifth Brandenburg Concerto. Forthcoming recordings for Hyperion include the complete flute sonatas of J S Bach.

Lisa lives in Shropshire with her husband, cellist Richard Tunnicliffe, and their daughter Luba, and spends much of her free time there working in her vegetable garden.