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Featured Album August 2025: Tabea Debus & Tom Foster "folio: Lessons from the Master"
This month sees the return of Recorder31 at The Early Music Shop, our annual celebration of all things recorder. Fitting, therefore, to include a new album of recorder music as this month's Featured Album. Tabea Debus is a virtuoso recorder soloist and educator whose seventh solo album 'folio' with Tom Foster (harpsichord) was released recently on the TYXArt label.
folio: Lessons from the Master
Tabea Debus & Tom Foster
OUR FEATURED ALBUM FOR AUGUST 2025
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From the artist's press release:
"All one has to do is hit the right notes at the right times, and the instrument plays itself."
This might well be a note scribbled inside a portfolio of a student's lessons with Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach's responsibilities as a teacher inspired him to create a myriad of pieces for the benefit of his students, both in and outside his family. This imagined folio of lessons highlights various facets of music-making and learning: from copying and arranging, through accompanying and ornamenting, to explorations of style and technique.
There are several sets of pieces that Bach collated (also) with his lessons in mind, amongst them the 'Orgelbüchlein', the Little Organ Book, which he started whilst working in Weimar in 1708, and the so-called Inventions and Sinfonias, composed in the 1720s in Cöthen for his son Wilhelm Friedemann and for "lovers of the clavier, and particularly those who desire to learn". He worked on the 'Orgelbüchlein' over many years, adding to it and making changes, presumably adapting to his student's needs. His inscription on the title page proclaims in a rhyming couplet that his compositions were "in praise for the Almighty's will, and for my neighbour's greater skill". In the context of this programme two choral preludes and two Sinfonias are used as "warm-ups", or preludes for five imagined lessons, functioning as the binding of the student's portfolio.
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Why The Early Music Shop loves "folio: Lessons from the Master":
‘Lessons from the Master’ is the subtitle of ‘folio’, the new album from recorder player Tabea Debus with harpsichordist Tom Foster. The master in question is J S Bach, whose music dominates the programme, but he is not the only master in attendance: Debus’ virtuosic playing on this recording proves her place amongst the finest recorder soloists of her generation.
Taking inspiration from Bach’s role as an educator, along with the study of his works, Debus takes us through five imagined lessons, with the music of the ‘master’ placed front and centre. Her work with Tom Foster is attractive and engaging; the two instruments converse with each other with ease, with a commendable sense of space and intimacy. In a brief departure from Bach, Albinoni’s Violin Sonata in A Minor is a stylish performance, with Debus’ recorder articulation as smooth as any musician with a bow.
Without wishing to detract from Foster’s contributions, one of the album’s highlights is Debus’ solo performance of Bach’s French Suite No. 2 (BWV 813). The arrangement in itself (Debus’ own) is an impressive feat, reducing the keyboard original to a solo melody line, but this performance is also poised, precise and expressive. The warm tone of her Ralf Ehlert voice flute is enhanced by the resonant acoustic of the National Centre for Early Music in York, the converted church where the disc was recorded last year, and Debus confidently jumps between the movements’ different characters.
This leads into the only modern piece presented on the album: Alex Nante’s Luz de otoño stands to illustrate the impact of Bach’s music after three centuries. This demonstrates a continuation of Debus’ commitment to the expansion of the recorder’s repertoire, also seen on previous albums including 2018’s 24 Fantasie Per Il Flauto. This engaging work with an angular second movement is in stark contrast to the rest of the album, but the inspiration from the French Suite preceding it in the programme can be clearly heard. Debus is a highly proficient performer of contemporary music.
A shift of sound comes in the final ‘lesson’ with Foster taking to the chamber organ for a new arrangement of a Concerto in B-flat Major (now BWV 982), itself a reinterpretation of a violin work by Johann Ernst, Price of Saxe-Weimar.
Debus’ own experience as an educator, at the HMTM in Hannover and previously at Wells Cathedral School, has undoubtedly influenced her work on this album and the sleeve notes show her passion for exploring and communicating the many nuanced aspects of Bach’s compositions. More than that, however, Debus demonstrates an absolute command of her instrument and a greatly enjoyable performance style. This is an excellent recording.
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folio: Lessons from the Master is available from The Early Music Shop online – or from our Snape Maltings showroom.