Handel: The Complete Flute Sonatas

'The performances deserve a place at the very forefront of available versions of these charming sonatas'
(Fanfare)

'Engaging pieces, consisting of between four and seven short, contrasted movements. Beznosiuk plays her deep-toned wooden flute with wonderful expression and Nicholson and Tunnicliffe accompany her with zest and sympathy'
(Classic FM Magazine)

'Delightful in every way' (Penguin Guide to Compact Discs')

Handel's so-called 'Opus 1' is a mish-mash of fifteen sonatas for various instruments cobbled together by an unscrupulous publisher in Handel's lifetime to take advantage of his name. Some of them may or may not be by Handel, although all of the music is fine and interesting. Four of the sonatas are for flute and they were recorded and issued in 1995 along with the rest of 'Opus 1' on Hyperion CDA66921/3, together with three so-called 'Halle' flute sonatas, making seven in all. All of these are on this CD, together with yet another Handel flute sonata which was discovered as recently as the 1980s and which we have recorded since the issue of the earlier set. This disc therefore gives us all eight of Handel's known flute sonatas.

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Born in England of Ukranian/Irish descent, Lisa Beznosiuk is an internationally renowned performer on early flutes. In her dual roles as soloist and orchestral principal, she has travelled throughout Europe, the far East, and North and South America, playing a wide range of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century repertoire. She trained at the Guildhall School of Music in London where she developed a great interest and love for the wooden flute, studying with Stephen Preston, and also found herself busy playing harpsichord continuo. As a valued member of many of the best period-instrument orchestras (including the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, English Concert, English Baroque Soloists, Academy of Ancient Music, London Classical Players and New London Consort), she also features prominently on many discs of orchestral music with conductors including John Eliot Gardiner, Charles Mackerras, Roger Norrington, Simon Rattle, Christopher Hogwood, Frans Brüggen and Trevor Pinnock.
Lisa Beznosiuk is well known as a recitalist, and her regular partners include harpsichordists Paul Nicholson, Maggie Cole, Malcolm Proud and Richard Egarr; lutenists Nigel North, Paula Chateauneuf and Elizabeth Kenny; her violinist brother Pavlo Beznosiuk; flautist Stephen Preston; cellist and gambist Richard Tunnicliffe and gambist Sarah Cunningham.

Lisa enjoys teaching and is professor of early flutes at London's Royal Academy and Royal College of Music, the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, and at C.E.M.P.R. at the University of Birmingham. Her reputation as a teacher brings her students from all over the world. Her many recordings include Vivaldi's Op 10 concertos (DG), Mozart concertos (Decca), J S Bach's Triple Concerto and several versions of his Suite in B minor and Fifth Brandenburg Concerto. Forthcoming recordings for Hyperion include the complete flute sonatas of J S Bach.

Lisa lives in Shropshire with her husband, cellist Richard Tunnicliffe, and their daughter Luba, and spends much of her free time there working in her vegetable garden.