This splendid early Romantic flute was made by the crème de la crème of Viennese master woodwind makers Stephan KOCH (1772-1828). We think this instrument was made around 1820 while Stephan was still alive before his son Franz took over the workshop.

Take a moment to listen to it yourself, playing Charles (Carl) Keller – Rondeau Hongrois (n° 4 from 6 Divertissements).

The flute features the typical characteristics of a Viennese flute. These include a G-sharp key on the middle joint, lined head joint with tuning slide, almost square embouchure and the sixth finger-hole drilled at a slant. It has a C-foot rather than the later standard B-foot.

The boxwood is lovely, as are the ivory rings combined with extremely fine silver keys. The design of the keys is spectacular and elegant and typical for early Koch flutes. We can see that the key cups are also very special. They are held in place with little screws which kind of adjust themselves until they find their perfect position on the metal inlays of the tone holes. This flute was entirely restored by a master woodwind instrument maker. It has new pads, corks, tenon thread and was thoroughly cleaned. The B-flat lever was missing and was replaced with a new one. The tuning slide works perfectly. A crack on the dorsal side of the head joint was repaired. No other cracks were found in any of the other parts of the instrument.

We can see that the flute has its original markings to enable the player to put each part together properly.

This flute has a flexible, elegant and bright sound. It is in excellent playing condition following full restoration. The pitch range is a=430-446 Hz. The flute plays at its best at a=440 Hz, but even plays beautifully at a=430 Hz, pulled out around 2 cm.  Its intonation is extremely good with a very easy response across the whole range.