Coming May 2024 and featuring: John Turner (recorder), Stephen Bettany (piano), Laura Robinson (recorder), Catherine Yates (viola), Alex Mitchell (viola)

A new double album of chamber music featuring the leading recorder player John Turner will be released on Divine Art around May 2024 with the title ‘Highways and Byways’.  It’s a set full of surprises. There are recorder pieces by well known and admired composers: Lennox Berkeley, John McCabe and Thomas Pitfield. Other rare recorder music by well known composers includes pieces by Igor Stravinsky (probably the only mature Stravinsky piece which has never before been commercially recorded), Alexander Gretchaninov (a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov), and a remarkable work for recorder and two violas by the distinguished American composer William Bergsma.  In addition there are two previously unknown pieces written for John Turner by the late Christopher Ball, and two pieces by John himself, one in homage to Ukraine. A veritable feast of rare music!

John Turner is one of the leading recorder players of today. Born in Stockport, he was Senior Scholar in Law at Fitzwilliam College Cambridge before pursuing a legal career, acting for many distinguished musicians and musical organisations (including the Hallé Orchestra, the Royal Northern College of Music and the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain), alongside his many musical activities. These included numerous appearances and recordings with David Munrow’s Early Music Consort of London, the Academy of Ancient Music, the English Chamber Orchestra, the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields and the English Baroque Soloists. 

John Turner’s recordings include no less than five sets of the Brandenburg Concertos, as well as the F Major version of Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 with Menuhin and George Malcolm, but lately he has made numerous acclaimed recordings of the recorder’s contemporary concerto and chamber music repertoire, including four solo concerto discs, all of which have received critical acclaim. Some of the most recent (all on the Divine Art and Métier labels) are a recording of music by the novelist and composer (and fellow Mancunian) Anthony Burgess, a disc in memory of Alfred Deller (a good friend) with James Bowman and Robin Blaze, including music by Blow, Handel, Tippett and Fricker, and programmes of music by Roy Heaton Smith, Peter Hope and Jim Parker. In 2020 and 2022 he also produced and performed on two Divine Art albums issued to commemorate and honour the late Sir John Manduell.

In the last few years he has played in Germany, Switzerland, Poland, France, New Zealand, Japan and the USA, and given many recitals on Radio 3 with pianist Peter Lawson. In all, he has given the first performances of over 600 works for the recorder, including works by many non-British composers, including Leonard Bernstein, Ned Rorem, Peter Sculthorpe, Douglas Lilburn, Petr Eben and Ruth Zechlin. Many of the works he has premiered have now entered the standard repertoire, and these and his own recorder compositions are regularly set for festivals and examinations.  Two new works recently published are Three Salutes and A Short Sprint, the latter for the young Japanese recorder player Hidehiro Nakamura.

Highways and Byways (DDX 21245)

Works:

• Sonatina (Lennox Berkeley)
• Little Suite (Wilfred Heaton)
• Sonatina No. 2 (Peter Pope)
• The Summer Triangle (David Butler)
• Lullaby (Igor Stravinsky)
• Sonatina (John Locke)
• Dancery (Thomas Pitfield)
• A Sad Pavane (John Turner)
• Hopscotch (John Turner)
• Domestic Life (John McCabe)
• Sam’s Tune (John McCabe)
• A Cheerful Little Piece (Christopher Ball)
• Homage to Dvořák (Christopher Ball)
• The Edgeley Tram (Peter Hope)
• Edgeley Road (David Jepson)
• Concertino (Alexander Gretchaninov)
• Pastorale and Scherzo (William Bergsma)
• Conversation Piece (Dorothy Pilling)
• Mount Street Blues (David Ellis)
• Fipple Baguette (David Ellis)
• A Little Caribbean (Thomas Pitfield)

John Turner Divine Art Recordings Group Discography