Three Salutes and A Whirl for Descant Recorder and Piano by John Turner

Three Salutes was written for the seventieth birthday of the composer Nicholas Marshall. The first performance in Great Britain was given on 29th September 2012, by the composer and the dedicatee, at the Temple Church, Budleigh Salterton, Devon, and the first overseas performance was given on 27th October 2012 at Kuwana City Hall, Mie Prefecture, Japan, by Hidehiro Nakamura and Yuka Sasaki.

A Whirl received its first performance at Wakefield Cathedral on 15th February 1992 by the composer and Jonathan Bielby, in celebration of the marriage of Jonathan Bielby and Jayne Hall.

John Turner was born in Stockport in 1943, and is one of the leading recorder players of today. He was Senior Scholar in Law at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, and as a practising solicitor acted for many leading musicians and musical organisations. He has premièred over 500 works for his instrument, including concertos written for him by Kenneth Leighton, Anthony Gilbert, Gordon Crosse, John Casken, Stephen Dodgson, Elis Pehkonen, John Gardner, Peter Hope and many others. His discoveries include recorder works by Handel, John Parry (The Nightingale Rondo, being the only known British nineteenth century
concert work for a fipple flute), Alan Rawsthorne and Antony Hopkins. His own recorder compositions, notably Four Diversions and Six Bagatelles (both in the Forsyth catalogue), are standard repertoire and examination pieces for the instrument worldwide. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Northern College of usic in 2002 for his services to British music and is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar of Manchester University.

See it performed here.