LSO principal flautist Adam Walker talks about his debut disc ‘Vocalise’

In our latest Gramophone Podcast, deputy editor Sarah Kirkup talks to flautist Adam Walker about his debut CD, ‘Vocalise’, which takes its inspiration from song. For Walker, the flute is ‘the closest instrument to the human voice’, and for this CD, he has chosen repertoire originally written for flute as well as a number of transcriptions, by composers as diverse as Poulenc, Messiaen, Bartók and Barber. With pianist James Baillieu, his duo partner on ‘Vocalise’, he’ll be performing music from the CD at a Wigmore Hall recital on May 27.

In 2009, at the age of just 21, Walker was appointed co-principal flute of the London Symphony Orchestra. He went on to win a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship Award, which has helped fund both ‘Vocalise’ and a new flute concerto commission from Huw Watkins, to be performed by Walker and the LSO in February 2014.

‘Vocalise’, on Opus Arte, is out now and will be reviewed in the July issue of Gramophone, on sale June 20. According to reviewer Ivan March, Walker is ‘a superb player…and there is much delicacy of nuance in his phrasing’. Listen for yourself – the Podcast contains excerpts from the recording.

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