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The Belgian flautist, Frank Theuns, studied recorder, transverse flute and traverso at the Koninklijk Muziekconservatorium Brussel. His teacher was Barthold Kuijken, with whom he shares a great enthusiasm for historically informed performance and period instruments.
Deeply interested in historic instruments, Frank Theuns specialised in playing the Baroque transverse flute. He has been playing with the most important Belgian, Dutch and French Baroque orchestras, among them Il Fondamento (Director: Paul Dombrecht), Les Musiciens du Louvre (Director: Marc Minkowski), Le Concert des Nations (Director: Jordi Savall), La Petite Bande (Director: Sigiswald Kuijken), and the Collegium Vocale Gent (Director: Philippe Herreweghe), and Die Nederlandse Bachvereniging (Director: Jos van Veldhoven). With harpsichordist Ewald Demeyere and viola da gamba player Martin Bauer he founded the ensemble Il Trionfo del Suono, a group specialised in Baroque music and music from the classicist period. After some years this ensemble was renamed Les Buffardins with a view to exploring Baroque music.
With his ensemble Les Buffardins Frank Theuns has recorded a representative selection of the flute repertoire (George Frideric Handel, Sammartini, Johann Philipp Kirnberger, Johann Joachim Quantz, Hotteterre, Montéclair, Boismortier, Blavet) for Accent. in 2006, he recorded the Concerto for Flute and Harp by W.A. Mozart with Anima Eterna Brugge under Jos van immerseel for the Zig-Zag Territoires label. This disc received many prizes in the musical press (e. g. the Diapason d’Or).
Passionate about original flutes, Frank Theuns has let himself be seduced as much by the extraordinarily different timbres as by the delightful small imperfections in the old flutes, apparent when applying the appropriate technique for each instrument. Over the past decade he has collaborated closely with the instrument maker Andreas Glatt as a ‘taster’ of flutes. He shares with him the same point of view regarding an ‘anti-dull’ authenticity, as much for the making of the flute as for the method of playing it.
Since 1989 Frank Theuns has taught Baroque transverse flute at the ’Koninklijk Muziekconservatorium Brussel’. He is regularly invited to give courses on performance : Esmuc Barcelona, the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, Internationale Händel-Akademie Karlsruhe, International Flutesymposium Atlanta, etc. Currently he is flautist in the orchestras Anima Aeterna Brugge and La Petite Bande. |
