On October 6th the well-known Adriana Breukink passed away. She was a Dutch recorder maker from Enschede, Netherlands, who made Renaissance, baroque and modern instruments. Breukink was introduced to the recorder by an aunt when she was nine years old. She attended the Royal Conservatory of The Hague where she worked with Frans Brüggen and Ricardo Kanji. The great recorder maker Fred Morgan offered classes at the Conservatory, and Breukink worked with him to make a Ganassi recorder. By the time she had completed her solo exam in 1980, she had decided to become an instrument maker.
Breukink became a leader in the development of new recorders. In 1997, she developed a Ganassi-based recorder with a chin-controlled dynamic slide extension for Moeck. In an effort to develop a Renaissance style recorder for use by beginners she developed the Adri’s Dream recorder in collaboration with Mollenhauer in 1999. She later expanded this line to include Dream Edition recorders for more advanced players. In conjunction with Küng, she introduced the Eagle Recorder for professional players in 2007.
Composer Chiel Meijering wrote more than 100 works especially for the instruments she developed. Dan Laurin is a famous recorder player using the instruments that Breukink built. Here is his personal testimony:
“Don’t imitate — innovate”. This was Adri: always looking for design developments and with a strategic outlook on the lives of recorder players and their needs. She simply sought to improve the conditions for all of us.
Adri’s oeuvre is remarkable. Apart from the uniquely beautiful consorts and copies of Baroque instruments she also designed some of the most important “modern” recorders: The Dream Flute with its funky colours and good sound inspired generations of young players to go on playing; the Eagle-Ganassi allowed the more advanced students to play together with modern, loud instruments (like a Steinway Grand); and the Eagle recorder, the ultimate design for the craving professional. The recorder world of today is extremely diversified, with a repertoire covering 800 years of western music, and Adri wanted to provide personalised voices for us players, not only for the known, traditional repertoire but also for what might come.
The Eagle recorder had almost no specific repertoire at all when it first “landed”. Adri told me that Chiel Meijering had composed some works for the Eagle, and when I inquired he immediately started to compose concerti for the Eagle and chamber orchestra. Today the total number of concerti is well above 50, and there are more to come. The Eagle recorder with its large and sonorous sound opened the door to a completely new arena for us players: the symphonic stage. For my own part I commissioned concerti for Eagle recorder and large orchestra by amongst others Vito Palumbo and Christofer Elgh, giving me the opportunity to perform with a large orchestra on equal terms. For me this was a major development, foremost artistically but also career-wise, allowing me to enter an otherwise prohibited area for my instrument. The key of course was the instrument, and to be in the midst of all the poetic colours of a modern orchestra brought tears in my eyes during the first rehearsals.
Adri was a true visionary. She loved the recorder community and wanted the best for all of us. She was generous and sharing, and a good listener always willing to talk to us players and discuss articulation, the quality of sound and the art of breathing. I once asked her about the origin of the name of the Eagle recorder:
“I always see the Eagle player circling the sky, above everything else, seeing everything… hearing everything….”.
I wish the same for you now. Tonight I’ll play one of your instruments in Rome, and you will be there for sure… listening… hearing everything… circling… and maybe wanting to change the voicing a little…“
Composers in the crosshairs of our attention