Held in high esteem by his contemporaries, relatively little information can be found on his life in the leading music dictionaries of today, a fact that stands in stark contrast to his compositional excellence as well as his virtuosity as a flautist. Though Kummer rose to the position of Kapellmeister in the castle chapel of an important German duke in his later years, his creative output failed to reach a similar level of renown after his death in 1870. The music on this collection, constructed around his favourite instrument, goes some way towards doing the composer some justice. There are a number of noticeable highlights here. Von Dir! is a fascinating attempt -- on