Michala Petri is a
Danish virtuoso on the
recorder, that bane of small children and their parents. She showed it could be an instrument of surpassing beauty and
virtuosity. Her recordings are mainly of the
Baroque: the recorder (and transposed
flute and
oboe) concertos of
Vivaldi,
J.S. Bach,
Telemann,
Frederick the Great,
Handel, and their fellows.
She was born on 7 July 1958 in Copenhagen, was playing at the age of three, was broadcast over Danish radio at the age of five, and gave her first solo concert in 1969. Her good looks bring great lustre to her album covers, but in musicality she is a master comparable to James Galway and Evelyn Glennie.
Although most of the repertoire for the various sizes of the recorder and related flutes is from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and accounts for most of her numerous records, she has also done modern works, and as the star exponent of the instrument, composers are now queuing to write for her. In recent years she has worked with the lutenist and guitarist Lars Hannibal.
I am reminded by Wiccanpiper of something I had meant to say about her recordings: she never breathes. You can't hear her breathing, at all, ever, and most of the CDs I own have her playing almost continuously for minutes at a time.
Many of her CDs, over and over again
www.danskmusik.com/dmfbook/klassisk/html/michala_petri.html
Oh lord, don't look at her own website www.michalapetri.com