Richard Adeney recordings

Richard Adeney Richard Adeney (1920–2010) was one of the finest British flute players of the twentieth century. In a long and distinguished orchestral career he was first flute in the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the English Chamber Orchestra, and appeared as a freelance player with many others. As a chamber musician he was a founder member of the Melos Ensemble, and he was a popular soloist and recording artist. Adeney studied at the Royal College of Music with Robert Murchie. Richard Adeney described his career in an entertaining and occasionally scandalous autobiography, Flute. (Brimstone Press, 2009. ISBN 978-1-906385-14-9) William Bennett wrote in the March 2011 edition of Flute (the journal of the British Flute Society), ‘Richard Adeney was one of my greatest flute heroes when I was a student. He had a beautifully focused sound, and could produce more different tone colours than anyone else I had heard. I used to have an acetate LP taken from a live broadcast of Richard playing some lollipops with the pianist Josephine Lee, including The Flight of the Bumble Bee, some of the Suite by Armstrong Gibbs, Airs de Ballet from Ascanio by Saint-Saëns, and the most fabulous performance ever of Briccialdi’s Carnival of Venice. This record got played to death by myself, Jimmy Galway and Ewen McDougall, and sadly now is barely audible through the scratch of the surface noise.’ An original tape of this performance of the Briccialdi has now been found and has been restored. We are grateful to Richard Adeney’s executor, the distinguished photographer Robert Taylor, for making this available.

Christopher Steward’s early flute recordings

Photograph of Richard Adeney by Robert Taylor www.taylor-photo.co.uk

Briccialdi: Variations on Carnival of Venice. Richard Adeney, flute; Josephine Lee, piano. BBC broadcast 11 February 1957.