Eric Dolphy, despite his avant-garde proclivities, played some lovely flute.
A nice little nylon-string guitar/flute piece from an interesting soundtrack of a kinda lousy movie:
“Easter Island” from Chariots of the Gods?
(Please ignore the high-pitch malarkey at the beginning.)
Also, composer Pierre-Octave Ferroud wrote some beautiful flute music. It sounds a bit like Debussy.
Princess Leia’s theme from Star Wars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoMfL2MYIa8Brian Jackson is mighty good and funky:
Composer Lalo Schifrin is best known for his cool movie soundtracks. Among others, this one has a flute solo:
Mr. Schifrin also composed "Concierto caribeño for Flute and Orchestra":
Lots of fine jazz saxophonists doubled on flute after 1950, when it became cool to play jazz flute.
See Frank Foster, Jerome Richardson, Yusuf Lateef, Bud Shank, Frank Wess, etc.
Lateef also published THE FLUTE BOOK OF THE BLUES, worth seeking out.
I also recommend Mark Shepard’s HOW TO LOVE YOUR FLUTE (1980).
Under “Somewhat Weird Things You Can Do With A Flute”, there’s that solo in Quincy Jones’s “Soul Bossa Nova”.
Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 - basically a concerto for 2 flutes.
Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 - basically a concerto for violin, keyboard, and flute.
Bach: the aforementioned Orchestral Suite No. 2 in B minor. I think the minuet is within the capabilities of a beginner.
Mozart: Concerto for Flute, Harp, and Orchestra in C major, K. 299/297c. The second movement is very nice.
Debussy: another vote for Syrinx.
Ravel: Daphnis and Chloe, Suite No. 2 (= act 3). Get the score from IMSLP and look at the flute and other woodwind parts at the beginning, the “sunrise” section. In the second section, the lovers re-enact the story of Pan and the nymph Syrinx. In the last part of that section, Pan plays the panpipes, made from the transformed nymph.
There’s a recording on YouTube of Emmanuel Pahud playing Varèse’s “Density 21.5”. The music is kind of strange perhaps, but the flute sound is incredible.
I’ve played the flute since 1963. One (very) nice thing about the standard concert flute is that it is in the key of C. This makes it relatively easy to use any music scored for piano, though you usually need to transpose up an octave.
Want to play “Layla?” Easy enough if you have the sheet music for piano. How about the organ part on “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida?” Yup. “Morning Has Broken?” Sure. They all sound great on the flute. In other words, she can very easily sight-read and play not only flute and recorder parts, but just about anything else using common sheet music for the piano. I have stacks of “Top 40” and “All-Time Hits” books for piano that work just fine when I want to noodle around a bit. Why limit yourself to songs that originally used a flute?
On Tuesday - Men Without Hats, really good flute main melody riff, seems straightforward enough to play (disclaimer, not a flautist, fully expect to be kneecapped in the back alley of the orchestra house by an angry flute section next time I’m leaving an orchestra show)