The Dutch recorder player Lucie Horsch gained attention in her early teens on Dutch television as a youth star, and her first album, 2016's Vivaldi, seemed to promise great things. That promise has been fulfilled in 2019 with Baroque Journey, whose title refers both to temporal and national ranges. Beginning and ending with entrancing excerpts from the Dutch recorder collection Der Fluyten Lust-Hof, Horsch moves through German, Italian, and French repertory of various periods. The Bach Oboe Concerto in D minor, BWV 1059R, a work of uncertain provenance anyhow, works wonderfully in a recorder arrangement, and there are genuine and rarely heard recorder concertos by Giuseppe Sammartini and Jacques-Christophe Naudot. Horsch's tonal stability in slower music (she does a gorgeous recorder "When I am laid in earth") is exceeded only by her liveliness and precision in the fast movements. And best of all are the variation sets, liquid and altogether captivating. Sample the 14e Ordre from the Troisième Livre of Couperin's Pièces de clavecin (a work that you'd hardly think would work in a recorder-and-lute arrangement), and you'll be hearing nightingales for the rest of the evening. In the concertos, Horsch gets expert support from the Academy of Ancient Music under Bojan Čičić, supplying quiet, graceful accompaniment that doesn't overwhelm Horsch and lets her shine. Right now, Horsch is sounding like the next Michala Petri, or maybe even more than that.
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