Flauto Dolce – Benedikta Bonitz

The ‘sweet flute’ (flauto dolce) of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and baroque made a huge comeback in the twentieth century, and has gained momentum since the 1930s. Benedikta Bonitz, an artist noted for her powers of expression and tone quality on this ancient instrument, plays a programme that includes some of the earliest known instrumental music, mostly from Italy in the early sixteenth century. She also performs an early dance suite from France, English variations on ‘Greensleeves’, and contemporary music by the German composer Walter Steffens, the Japanese Somei Satoh, and the German-American Heiner Stadler.

Miss Bonitz performs solo and also accompanied by cello and harpsichord (Irene Güdel and Yoma Appenheimer, respectively). The recording was made in the thousand-year-old church in Heiden, a mediaeval village in Westphalia, Germany.