New Album of Recorder Music from John Turner: The Whistling Book

In the world of serious recorder music, John Turner has been at the top of the tree for many years, as soloist and member of illustrious ensembles including the Academy of Ancient Music, English Chamber Orchestra, and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields.  He features as the main attraction in ‘The Whistling Book’ – a double CD/digital album to be released worldwide by Divine Art in November 2022.

Most of the works on this double album are included in the Forsyth catalogue of recorder music, and many of them have become standard repertoire pieces for the recorder, known and loved all over the world, and frequently set as test and examination pieces. Alan Bullard’s Recipes, John Golland’s New World Dances, John Turner’s Four Diversions and Robin Walker’s A Book of Song and Dance all fall into this category. The album first appeared on a special release by Forsyth Bros under the title ‘John and Peter’s Whistling Book in 1998; this reissue adds three new items, Robin Walker’s ecstatic and virtuoso Her Rapture for solo recorder, John Addison’s Spring Dances for solo recorder, written for John after a memorable visit to the composer’s Vermont home, and, for the more adventurous, Kokopelli by Richard Whalley, inspired by an American fertility deity, with magical sounds played on a prepared piano by the composer.

John Turner and his piano partner Peter Lawson are both stalwarts of the English music scene and have made substantial numbers of recordings for many labels over the years; Turner appears on 25 current Divine Art group titles and Lawson 6.  This album will (re)introduce a host of works epitomising the best in modern recorder music from the UK.

The Whistling Book DDA 21421

Release date: scheduled for 11 November 2022
Total playing time c. 126 minutes
Three works receive their premiere recording – recorded 2021 (Spring Dances and her Rapture) and 2017 (Kokopelli).
All other works previously appeared on Forsyth FS001-002, recorded in 1998

Works and Artists:

• John Turner (recorder) & Peter Lawson (piano):
  • Skally Skarecrow’s Whistling Book (Geoffrey Poole)
  • Prospero’s Music (Michael Ball)
  • Recipes (Alan Bullard)
  • Suite (Alan Rawsthorne)
  • Caprice (Nicholas Marshall
  • Song (Douglas Steele)
  • A Book of Song and Dance (Robin Walker)
  • Air (Walter Leigh)
  • Capriccio (Arnold Cooke)
  • Farings (Anthony Gilbert)
  • Four Diversions (John Turner)
  • Shadows in Blue (David Ellis)
  • Divertissement (John Golland)
  • New World Dances (John Golland)
  • Saturday Soundtrack (Kevin Malone)
• John Turner (solo recorder):
  • Spring Dances (John Addison)
  • Her Rapture (Robin Walker)
• Richard Whalley (prepared piano):
  • Kokopelli (Richard Whalley)