The Amsterdam Recorder Quartet BRISK is celebrating it’s 25th birthday with this remarkable album. It combines the old at the new: compostions spanning over 500 years. It shows the enormous musical creativity and diversity of the low countries. All the early music recorded on this CD can be termed Dutch in one sense or another, given that its composers all officially belong to the Dutch School, although it does not seem so at first glance with songs set to French texts and composers with foreign names; historically speaking, however, the Netherlands have undergone many changes. What is more, all of the various song arrangements, to take J’ay pris amours as one example, are actually transcribed versions of the fruits of a long tradition of improvisation. The excitement that must have been generated when these works were first performed is the same that we experience with our new improvisations today.

Brisk Recorder Quartet Amsterdam is made up of Marjan Banis, Saskia Coolen, Alide Verheij and Bert Honig. The four musicians studied at the Sweelinck Conservatory of Amsterdam under Walter van Hauwe and Kees Boeke, where they also took part in master classes with Frans Brüggen. Variation in style and mood, virtuosity and lightness are the ingredients that go to make up a concert by Brisk; the quartet always appears on the concert platform with an enormous collection of recorders. Since their founding in 1986 Brisk has given countless concerts in renowned concert