My interest in early music and historical instruments began when I was very young and has remained at the heart of my musical life ever since. I studied in Rome, Verona and The Hague with Barthold Kuijken, where I earned a Soloist Diploma with honours.
Over the years, I have had the opportunity to perform around the world, both as a soloist and with leading specialised ensembles, exploring repertoire on Renaissance, Baroque, Classical and Romantic transverse flutes. I have also participated in more than 90 recordings.
Teaching has been an equally important part of my musical life since 1995, taking me to institutions across Europe. Since 2014, I have been Professor of Historical Transverse Flute at the Mozarteum University Salzburg and, since 2024, also at Anton Bruckner Privatuniversität Linz.
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The first thing you do when you pick up your traverso to start the practice day, and why?

The first thing I try to do is pick up the thread from where I left it the day before. I like the idea of keeping yourself alive and moving, perhaps with several different things going on at the same time.
Then it depends very much on how I feel. If I’m in good playing shape, I may immediately find that agility and connection with the instrument again. But if I’m coming back from a period of tiredness, fatigue, or simply a break, I may first need to “open up” the sound again.
I might begin with a single note, looking for the fundamentals, moving through the different registers, trying some articulation. But above all, I try to sense how I am at that particular moment: is my tongue awake? Are my ears open? Are my muscles relaxed? Is my body active? Because in the end, we are human bodies. And that first contact with the instrument is physical as well as mental. The older I get, the more I realise how important this is, and I’ve come to appreciate it even more thanks to the help of a wonderful physiotherapist.

Any recurring piece to play every day, and why?​

There isn’t one particular piece that I necessarily play every day. But there is music I return to regularly, partly because some important repertoire needs to be refreshed from time to time.
It might be Renaissance ricercars, Hotteterre’s L’Art de préluder, Quantz’s Caprices, Telemann’s Fantasias, or even solo flute repertoire from the Romantic period.
But I also find it very interesting to connect these pieces with other music from the same period, perhaps written for other instruments. If I’m working on Bach, for instance, I might look at the cello suites; I can compare Telemann’s Fantasias with those he wrote for other instruments. Or Hotteterre might lead me towards violin writing, and I begin to see an arpeggio not simply as something technical, but as the way a monodic instrument can represent a chord.
This also changes the way you think about technique. Technique doesn’t necessarily have to come from an abstract exercise: it can grow out of understanding the structure of the music. If I understand what that arpeggio represents, where it comes from and what its function is, then the technical gesture itself takes on a different meaning.
I find these connections extremely stimulating. And a piece is never really “finished” just because you’ve studied it many times before: repertoire can be continually rediscovered.

Do you have a daily routine?​

I wouldn’t really say I have a fixed routine. For me, practice time is the most precious time. Between everyday life, teaching, concerts and family, when I manage to have a space that is truly my own, I think of it almost as an oasis.
And whenever I can, I try to devote some of that time to what I call an investment in my practice. Something that I may not need for the next concert, but that I know I’ve wanted to explore for a long time.
It might be a composer, a musical form, a particular kind of ensemble, orchestral music I don’t know so well, English or French airs. I still have chapters that I opened when I was a student and never had time to finish. Every now and then I finally manage to go back to one of them.
For me, that is a very important part of practising.

What kind of goals do you set for your practice?​

Of course, there is performance. In that sense, we musicians are a little like athletes: we prepare because at some point the performance arrives, and we have to be ready.
But I always try to accompany that training with some kind of cultural or aesthetic stimulus, something that also deepens my artistic knowledge. So on my ideal practice day, I have several different things “switched on” at the same time: what I actually have to prepare, but also something I’m searching for or exploring.
One thing that has stayed with me very strongly from Barthold Kuijken’s teaching is this: even when we are playing at home, at that moment we are already performing. What we play has to mean something. Five minutes later it may be different — because the conditions will have changed — but at that particular moment, it has to be music.

Do you do any systematic warm-up?

I don’t think of a warm-up as a sequence that always has to be the same. Of course, there are scales, long notes, arpeggios, articulation — we all do these things. But I also like to experiment.
For a while, for instance, I used to begin with the melody of a Lutheran chorale; at other times with a Gregorian cantus firmus, a familiar tune, or a vocalise. Sometimes I even like to use music that doesn’t really belong to the instrument or to its period. It’s interesting to see how the flute responds to it.
Over the years I’ve also become freer in relation to certain patterns and routines. So I don’t have a formula that I repeat every morning: I try instead to find the kind of contact I need on that particular day.

Do you have a specific structure for warm-up and practice sessions?​

I might start by warming up, open up a subject and begin working on it. Then I see what happens.
Perhaps I realise that I need to “wake up” my tongue a little, so I do something with articulation. Or perhaps my fingers need activating. I come across a sensitive note and try a different fingering; or I realise that I need to stop and work on the harmony or the sound.
Then perhaps I take a break and, when I come back, I look at it from another angle. Why did the composer write this? Does it remind me of something else? I go and find another piece and make a comparison.
And to really get to know a piece, I also like to get inside the other voices. I might play or record the bass, play another instrument’s part, try to understand how that voice thinks, and then return to my own.

Any distinctive characteristics of baroque flute daily practice vs. modern flute or other instruments?​

One very obvious thing is the relationship with keys. On the traverso, the distance between one key and another can be enormous. The instrument responds differently, and major and minor scales can create completely different relationships.
So simply entering into a key already means beginning to understand the instrument: seeing how it responds, which notes require particular attention, what kind of sound I can look for.
And then there is enormous variety among historical flutes themselves. A Renaissance flute, a Baroque traverso, a Classical or Romantic flute all have different technical and physical demands. Playing instruments from different periods can create some very interesting technical connections, but you also have to respect their differences.
I almost like to “somatize” the music through the flute: to understand the instrument deeply, to respect what it is and what it can give, while at the same time finding a way to shape it through my own sensitivity. The relationship between player and instrument then becomes something very physical as well as musical.
Building technique on these stylistic differences broadens your personality as a player and allows you to adapt much more precisely to different musical languages. And that is exactly what I find so fascinating.

What are the key elements and unmissable points of daily practice?​

For me, it’s important that practice doesn’t become something purely mechanical. You have to observe what is happening and respond to it.
If there is an articulation problem, I do a certain kind of work. If I come across a sensitive note, perhaps I try another fingering. If the problem is the sound, I might work with the voice or with resonance. If it’s something musical, perhaps I need to stop and understand the harmony better.
So I like practice to be very varied, with different kinds of activity alternating. And at the end, we shouldn’t simply find ourselves exhausted, with all our muscles tight. Practice should have built something.
I like to think of it almost as daily food that doesn’t weigh you down, but nourishes you.
The key word for me is awareness, from several points of view: technical, musical, and also personal. It means always knowing what I am doing, why I am doing it, and, through practice, gradually getting to know myself better as well.

How long and distributed should warm-up and practice be?

I don’t think there is a fixed proportion between warm-up and practice. You have to find it from day to day. But I do think that a couple of hours of serious work can already be time very well spent over the course of a day. Of course, it depends on your age, your commitments, and the particular stage of life you are in.
And breaks are extremely important. We flutists also play in an asymmetrical posture, so we have to pay particular attention to the body. From that point of view, a musician should think a little like an athlete.
And there’s something I think about more and more: not only the warm-up, but also what we might call the cool-down. When I finish playing, how are my head, shoulders and hands? The body also needs time to find its balance again before returning to normal activities.

Any  specific tip to address difficult technical passages during daily practice?

When I come across a long, technically difficult passage, the first thing I try to understand is where its key points are.
It’s interesting: the first time you read a passage, it seems impossible; then, after you’ve worked on it for a while, suddenly you can play it. What happened? Probably, at the beginning, you hadn’t yet understood exactly how to set off. It’s a bit like a race: starting from a standstill is one thing; starting already prepared is another.
For the fingers, I find it enormously helpful to mentally remove the secondary notes and remember the structural notes. If there’s a leap, I need to know exactly which note I’m heading towards. And the harmonic construction helps me enormously too: this is a major arpeggio, then it becomes a seventh, then it moves towards another harmony... Once I understand these relationships, my fingers also know much better where they have to go.
Of course, I work slowly and in small sections: two bars, four bars, then another group. But I also try not to remain dependent on reading all the time. If I’m constantly reading every single note, I have to connect eyes, fingers and tongue at the same moment, and I risk always being just a little behind. If, instead, I already know the structure and the harmonic progression, everything changes.
And then there is managing your energy. It’s like playing a long phrase in a single breath: if I want to reach the end, I have to organise the breath from the very beginning. In a difficult passage too, I need to have the first note already prepared and know where I’m starting from and where I want to arrive.

Are there any tools that are particularly useful for practicing?

Yes, I would say all of them: tuner, metronome, mirror, recording. But it is always a question of balance: how much do we rely on these tools, and how much do we continue to develop our own sensitivity?
The tuner, for example, is essential for me, especially when I’m preparing for a concert. When I’m practising alone, not necessarily. During my own warm-up, in a sense, I am the tuner. I have to tune myself, know my instrument, know how the different notes behave and what adjustments I need to make.
When I’m preparing to play with other people, on the other hand, the work becomes much more specific, because the pitch, the context and the environmental conditions can all change. First I need to know myself and my instrument; then I can prepare for the actual situation.
The metronome — absolutely. Some people use it too much and others don’t use it at all. Our natural pulse can have very different tendencies: some people slow down, others are a little too free. So from time to time, having an external reference is extremely important.
I particularly like systems where you don’t simply hear every beat equally, but have a broader reference. In a dance, for instance, you have to feel the downbeat and the upbeat, but also larger levels of pulse. I’m fascinated by the idea of having that space and then filling it with what happens inside, rather than being constantly obsessed with tick-tock, tick-tock.
The mirror I use a great deal for physical attitude and posture. Not to look at yourself narcissistically, but to see, for example, whether I’m leaning too far forward or whether there is something in my posture that I need to correct. Of course, looking only takes you so far: in music, ultimately, the most important thing is listening.
And recording is extremely important. I really enjoy, for example, recording the bass and then playing over it. Because I’m doing two things at once: I hear myself, including all my imperfections, and at the same time I begin to understand how the bass thinks. And by playing the bass, I also understand agogic flexibility much better. I immediately hear how boring it can be if everything is too strictly in time, and how much more interesting it is to understand what is happening within the time.
So yes, I would use all the tools. But always remembering that they are tools.

Any other general advice, suggestion, tip?

I would say: don’t lock yourself into a single way of playing, and keep your curiosity and your desire to explore alive.
One of the wonderful things about historical instruments is precisely the possibility of moving through very different worlds. Of course we can have our preferences, but I think we need to “marry more countries, marry more styles” — to remain thirsty for discovery.
Because the technique you need for French music can be completely different from what you need for an Italian sonata. And if we build our technique on these stylistic differences as well, in the end we have many more possibilities.
Historical research should serve this purpose too. We don’t study all these things in order to distance ourselves from the music: we study them so that we can bring it to life today. But knowledge of the sources shouldn’t turn into dogmatism. It’s neither a question of ignoring what Quantz or other writers tell us, nor of deliberately doing the opposite simply in order to be original. Research gives us tools to understand and to make choices.
In the end, everyone should be able to find their own expression in the music, without having to indoctrinate anyone else. And we also have the great advantage of knowing all the music that came afterwards. Why not use it sometimes to see what it can teach us about our instrument?

How do you advise your students as far as structuring their daily practice?

The first thing for me is to look at the person in front of me. Students can be completely different from one another: in age, personality, level, and in how receptive they are to certain kinds of stimulus.
That’s why I try to arrive at a lesson as fresh as possible. I need to be able to pick up signals quickly and respond to them. And that is one of the things I find most beautiful about teaching: seeing how quickly a collaboration can develop around a problem.
I don’t want to arrive and simply bring “my things” with me. I want to see: what is the situation today? What can we do? What impulse can I awaken?
And from there, you can begin to build the way that person will practise on their own as well.

Do you suggest or teach a warm-up routine?

Again, it depends very much on the individual.
I already observe how a student arrives, how they put the flute together, what their first approach to the instrument is. If I see something that seems unhealthy to me, or simply something that doesn’t quite “resonate” with me, I try to point it out and perhaps work on it over time.
But you also have to understand when to intervene. Some students are just waiting to receive a certain kind of guidance; others may not yet be ready for it, or perhaps at that moment they are looking for something else. If I insist too much, I may achieve exactly the opposite effect.
So of course I can suggest exercises or ways of getting physically and musically activated, but I don’t think the answer is to give everyone the same routine.

Are there any specific pieces particularly beneficial to be played regularly in daily practice?​

For the one-keyed traverso, I would immediately say Telemann’s Fantasias. For me, they are almost a little encyclopaedia: you have the keys, the dances, French, Italian and German styles. And Telemann understood very well how to write for this instrument.
Then, from a more specifically technical point of view, there are Quantz’s Caprices. That is a book that regularly sits on my music stand. I keep coming back to it, and every time I find something interesting there. And of course, from there you can explore other collections of caprices as well.
And then Bach’s Arias. For me, they are a fundamental part of traverso technique. The cantata arias are among the great repertoires of our instrument, and an extraordinary training ground.
In general, I really like taking real repertoire and, when necessary, turning it into an exercise. That way, technique always remains within the music.

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