The combination of flute and guitar was a feature of early tango recordings – instruments central both to the genre and to the music of Astor Piazzolla. The composer’s quintessential Histoire du Tango charts the form’s evolution from its appearance in the barrios of Buenos Aires to its eventual assimilation by classical composers. The Six Études tanguistiques for solo flute is Piazzolla’s only work for a melodic unaccompanied instrument. The remainder of the programme presents a sequence of arrangements by Vicente Coves and Kazunori Seo and includes some of Piazzolla’s most famous and beautiful compositions as well as preserving a historically important, previously unreleased recitation by Horacio Ferrer.

Brothers Franz and Karl Doppler were both accomplished flautists. Their compositions, sometimes written together, reflect the tastes of the period, making great use of Hungarian themes. The famous Duettino sur des motifs américains quotes Hail Columbia, Boatman Dance and The Star-spangled Banner, ending with the inescapable Yankee Doodle. Intended for recitals and conceived with piano accompaniment, the transcriptions and pot-pourris featured on this recording have been orchestrated at the request of Patrick Gallois. The Concerto for two flutes is a more ambitious work, suggesting the young Mendelssohn or Weber.

Franz and Karl Doppler were virtuoso flutists of the middle nineteenth century, born in Lemberg in what is now Ukraine. They toured and worked in various parts of Europe, composing music (sometimes jointly) for their own use in recitals. All the music here, except for the final Concerto for two flutes and orchestra in D minor (first exhumed by Jean-Pierre Rampal), was originally accompanied by piano and has been arranged for orchestra at the behest of Patrick Gallois, one of the flutists featured here.

The music director of St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, the city of his birth, Leopold Hofmann (1738-1793) was a prolific composer. The son of a highly educated civil servant and a student of Georg Wagensil, he wrote dozens of symphonies, much chamber music and about 60 concertos, including at least 13 for the flute. Insistent repeated notes in the upper strings set the stage for the flute entrance in the opening `Allegro moderato' in the G Major concerto. Over a walking bass line, the glittering flute dances in and out of the accompanying strings, sometimes soaring above them, at others engaging in delicate interplay.

Leopold Hofmann ( 1738-1793 )was a composer at the time of Mozart and Haydn, along with some 30 other composers who took musical development from the late Baroque into the Classical Period. Hofmann was born before Mozart, and died after Mozart died. These composer's creations were rarely played after their deaths, because of the absolute genius of Mozart and Haydn. Indeed, until Chandos and Naxos recently recorded many of these lessor known musician's works, most of the world was completely ignorant of their originality and beauty.