The Dutch recorder player and early music conductor Frans Brüggen died on August 13. He was born in Amsterdam and studied recorder, flute, and musicology. By age 21, he was a professor of Baroque music at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. He began playing professionally and became famous for his virtuoso technique on the recorder.
Contemporary composers dedicated works to him (view clips on YouTube), including:
Luciano Berio: Gesti (1967) (view on YouTube)
Louis Andriessen: Sweet (1964) and Ende (1981) for 2 alto recorders, 1 player
Peter Schat: Hypothema (1969)
Makoto Shinohara: “Fragmente” (1968)
Maki Ishii: “Black Intention I” (1976)
He stopped playing recorder in concerts in the early 1980s, at which time he founded the Orchestra of the 18th Century.
Obituaries:
Het Parool, “The John Lennon of classical music”
A short rembrance from BR Radio (in German)
Frans Brüggen playing Telemann’s Fantasie Nr. 3 in a recording from 1967.
Brüggen conducting his Orchestra of the 18th Century in the overture to Die Entführung aus dem Serail