Instruments

Collaborating with the best recorder builders

As a recorder player, Maurice Steger relies on the world’s best recorder makers, who have the expertise to craft original instruments according to Baroque designs in such a way that the instruments sound authentic and are also suitable for modern concert venues. The artist’s collection of over 70 instruments – which are all in different pitches and sizes, and which feature a variety of characteristics – forms the foundations of his entire recorder repertoire.

Various recorder makers have contributed to Maurice Steger’s impressive instrument collection – particularly worthy of mention is the long-standing collaboration with four Swiss recorder-making specialists, who produce instruments of many different types, as well as with Fred Morgan, an Australian recorder maker and the most important creator of Baroque instruments of the late 20th century. Morgan’s skill of giving his recorders a wealth of tonal moods and possibilities paved the way for instrument makers of the early 21st century to enter a whole new era of recorder-building.

 

Heinz Ammann, Andreas Schwob and Küng Recorder Manufacturing Company

Heinz Ammann, who has made many original instruments according to Baroque designs; Andreas Schwob (who retired in 2018), who for many years specialised in the making of recorders for Renaissance and Early Baroque music (many of his instruments can be heard in the album Venezia 1625); Küng Recorder Manufacturing Company in Schaffhausen, with whom Maurice Steger has enjoyed a long-standing collaboration creating recorders with modern pitches, which he uses for playing with modern orchestras and for the Tino Flautino children’s projects.

Intensive collaboration with Ernst Meyer

For over 25 years, Maurice Steger worked together with the maître flutier Ernst Meyer, who died in June 2016. During this long period, the two worked together time and again in search of the ideal sound, mutually encouraging and inspiring one another. Fred Morgan’s recorders, which can be found in all corners of the world, were analysed by Meyer, providing him with new ideas and inspiring him to continue and further develop Morgan’s legacy. The collaboration between Ernst and Maurice resulted in many wonderful and pioneering instruments.

Ernst Meyer specialised in instruments with rare pitches, as well as in the two most popular treble recorders, made according to designs by J. Denner and P.I. Bressan, and whose sounds are uniquely rich and flexible thanks to highly specialised and micro-technically fine voicing. In collaboration with the Küng family in Schaffhausen and the Meyer family in Hemberg, Maurice Steger developed the K4 treble recorder.