In 1987/1988 Gloria Coates wrote a solo for alto recorder in collaboration with the recorder player Dörte Nienstedt. Extreme dynamic increases, simultaneous playing and singing, hard accents, fluttering tonguing, multiphonics, upward glissandi and vibrato go beyond the usual framework of music for recorder and led to the title ‘Breacking through’.

The version for transverse flute was written with Edmund Wächter (premiere 19 October 1988). The main aim was to utilise the greater range of the ...