AMANDA MARKWICK

HISTORICAL FLUTIST

Concerts, Masterclasses, Coaching

photo credit: marcel sahlmen, musikfest eichstätt

photo coming soon!

This flute is a copy of flutes built by Heinrich Grenser (Dresden, 1764-1813).

Maker: R. Tutz (Innsbruck, Austria)

My instrument: C-Foot, Grenadilla, tuning-cork, 8 keys silver, A= 430 Hz

With its clear and bright sound, this flute has a directness that works beautifully in an orchestral setting, and I have also used it in wind quintets and ensembles with fortepiano.  In my final exam, I played this flute for works by Haydn, Reicha, and even Weber.  This spring I plan to use this flute to record chamber music by Haydn and Beethoven.

I bought this flute in 2006, but I only began seriously playing it in 2007.  Coming from the one-keyed traverso, I found that this 8-keyed flute provided many exciting new possibilities for dynamics and colors, particularly for forked fingerings!  As I approached this flute, I looked at Fürstenau’s Die Kunst des Flötenspiels, with its pages (and pages, and pages) of alternate fingerings for each note.  Daunting at first, but the end result has been that I actually feel very free when playing this instrument.  As this period was a time of great transition in flute-building,  it seems that there is actually no “right answer” to the fingering question.  If I am happy with the color produced by the fingering, I use it.  This variety of color and fingering is part of what makes this instrument terribly fun to play, and I am continually surprised by the possibilities in this flute.  Each time I play it, there’s a new discovery…