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The British Flute Society the President Sir James Galway OBE magazine Vice-president Albert Cooper • Chairman Atarah Ben-Tovim MBE pan lute pan f The Journal of the British Flute Society 3 News: the BFS convention Volume 27 number 3 September 2008 Reports and pictures from the fabulously Editor Robert Bigio successful BFS convention in Manchester. • Contacting the BFS Secretary and advertising Anna Munks 19 Kenneth Smith: From 27 Eskdale Gardens the toolroom to the first Purley, Surrey CR8 1ET flute’s chair Telephone and fax 020 8668 3360 Email [email protected] Membership secretary Kenneth Smith has spent twenty-five years as John Rayworth first flute in the Philharmonia. His path to the The Nook, How Mill top has been anything but ordinary. Brampton, Cumbria CA8 9JY Telephone 0845 680 1983 Email [email protected] 25 Telemann’s Fantasias Editorial Robert Bigio Rachel Brown on these remarkable solo works 1 Doveridge Gardens for the flute. London N13 5BJ Telephone 020 8882 2627 Fax 020 8882 2728 35 The BFS at twenty-five Email [email protected] • Simon Hunt tells the story of the first quarter- Editorial committee century of the BFS. Robert Bigio Simon Hunt 39 Expressive teaching Mike MacMahon Other news • 14 Nina Perlove on the legacy of Alain Marion. Assistant editor Carla Rees [email protected] Scottish Flute Trio Junior editor Thomas Hancox 45 [email protected] Copy editor Christopher Steward The Scottish Flute Trio has joined some dancers • for some impressive new performances. Design and typesetting Robert Bigio • 49 Reviews Cover photograph Carla Rees Dawson • David Nicholson. Geoffrey Gilbert. Graham CDs, books and music. Mayger. Printed in the United Kingdom at the 61 The small print University Press, Cambridge 16 Letters to the editor Views expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the official view of the British BFS Council and Officers, AFT, announcements, Flute Society. All copyrights reserved. York Bowen’s Sonata for Two Flutes. Gibberish. membership information, index to advertisers. Registered charity No. 326473 South West Flute Festival. Congratulations ISSN 1360-1563 from Seattle. 64 The Last Word… www.bfs.org.uk The British Flute Society’s Silver Jubilee Competition for advanced performers under the age of 25 a celebration of British music Saturday 22 November 2008 Regent Hall, Oxford Street, London (near Oxford Circus tube station) Closing date for entries: 10 October 2008 First Prize: Resona 100 ute with oset G mechanism provided by Burkart Flutes & Piccolos For further information and an application form contact Anna Munks, BFS Secretary: Email: [email protected] Telephone: +44 (0)20 8668 3360 www.bfs.org.uk Registered charity no: 326473 e British Flute Society News • BFS Convention in Manchester—A first report Trevor Wye conducting his arrangement of Tallis’s Spem in alium. By Robert Bigio I made a note to myself to avoid gushing about what a indeed any of the hundreds of other pieces of dross that wonderful convention we have just had. Somehow, as infest our repertoire. I prepare to write this, I feel I am not going to succeed. So, why was this convention different? Quite simply, Now, I consider myself a music-lover who has just hap- it was down to quality—quality of musicianship and pened into the flute world. I hear a lot of flute music, quality of programming. We heard some stunningly good and I have heard some pieces far, far too often. In fact, playing—playing of a standard that, had the musician after a couple of days at a convention some years ago been a pianist or a violinist or a singer, that musician I was curled up with my head in my hands, dream- would have been an international megastar. I have ing of Beethoven quartets and other examples of what torn up my note to myself. Now be prepared for some I considered ‘real’ music. It may be sacrilegious for serious gushing, the quantity of which will only be the editor of a flute magazine to say this, but my life restricted by the fact that I did not (indeed could not) get would not be incomplete were I never again to hear the to every performance. There were simply too many. In Chaminade Concertino, or those wretched variations on fact, that was my only complaint: I would much rather Carnival of Venice that so many players inflict upon us, or have heard fewer concerts, but longer ones. the www.bfs.org.uk magazine 3 pan • flute • News flute players, enchanted the audience with arrange- ments of a Bach adagio from an organ work and of songs by Hamilton Harty and Michael Head, and gave a ravishing performance of Dvořak’s Romance Op. 11 for violin. Denis Bouriakov stunned us all with a programme of super-virtuoso arrangements of works by Kreisler, Tchaikovsky, Bach, Paganini and Mendelssohn. Lorna McGhee followed this with her arrangements of Bach, Poulenc, Rachmaninoff, Debussy (the Violin Sonata, which worked well on the flute and was played brilliantly) and Wieniawski (his Scherzo-Tarantelle, delivered with jaw-dropping virtuos- Daniel Pailthorpe ity). Timothy Hutchins, Denis Bouriakov and Lorna McGhee in one evening: never mind that they are virtuoso flute players of an almost unimaginable My personal favourites, interestingly, were all standard—they are terrific musicians, too. orchestral players. (Perhaps I admire their discipline?) I was bowled over by Daniel Pailthorpe’s playing on Friday morning. Daniel performed the Lennox Berkeley Sonatine, that staple of ABRSM examinations some years ago, simply because he liked it, and he played it so beautifully that many of us were forced to reconsider our opinion of the piece. Likewise, he played the Mozart Andante so elegantly that I forgot that it had been massacred by generations of inept pupils. The big surprise was Daniel’s brilliant arrangement of Stravinsky’s Divertimento from The Fairy’s Kiss, adapted from Stravinsky’s own violin and piano arrangement. Wissam Boustany Traffic on the M6 caused me to miss most of the recital by Wissam Boustany and Aleksander Szram. The reaction of members of the audience made it clear that I had missed a great performance. These musicians played un-hackneyed music, too, by Mel Bonis (her wonderful Sonate), and by Bushra El-Turk and Edwin York Bowen. Other duties caused me to miss the equally well-regarded recital by Ian Clarke. Philippa Davies, as ever, played beautifully and included a new work by her pianist, Jan Willem Nelleke. Jonathan Snowden wowed the audience Timothy Hutchins and Janet Creaser Hutchins with performances of John Rutter’s Suite Antique and Widor’s Suite. Arrangements were popular at this convention. Michel Debost, the distinguished former professor Timothy Hutchins, that most elegant and artistic of of flute at the Paris Conservatoire and now professor the 4 pan • flute magazine September 2008 News • Michel Debost Robert Dick at Oberlin in the USA, played some works associ- piccolo player from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, ated with his predecessor, Paul Taffanel, followed by Walfrid Kujala. some observations on playing and teaching the flute Robert Dick gave his usual high-octane perform- drawn from his book, The Simple Flute. Michel is a most ances of his own music, and was on this occasion amusing and perceptive man. joined by Carla Rees. That other wizard of new sounds, Matthias Ziegler, blew his audience away with his extraordinary playing. Vieri Bottazzini and the All Flutes Chamber Orchestra performed an arrangement of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Andrea Oliva performed a well-received pro- gramme of standard repertoire works. Rachel Brown performed all twelve Fantasias for the flute by Telemann. Rachel’s musicianship is unsur- passed, and she showed us features of these works that few of us had ever noticed. (Do read her article elsewhere in this issue.) One of the great players men- tioned above said to me before Rachel’s concert that much as he loves the Telemann Fantasias, he didn’t think he could sit through all twelve. Interestingly, Rhonda Larson he was still there at the end, such was the beauty of Rachel’s playing. Trevor Wye conducted his arrangement for flutes Rhonda Larson, once again, lit up the convention of Thomas Tallis’s forty-voice Spem in alium, to the with her music-making and with her personality. delight of everyone listening and everyone playing. Nikos Nikopoulos and Georgia Xagara presented The buzz in the foyer amongst the performers after an interesting programme of music for flute and the rehearsal was lovely: ordinary folk had found harp. Amy Morris, with the mezzo-soprano Katharine themselves sharing music stands with some of the Goeldner, gave a performance of recent works by Rory finest flute players ever to have walked the earth. It Boyle and Peter Ash. is the mix of players with audience that makes the Piccolo performances and workshops were given by BFS convention so special—amateurs find themselves Christine Erlander Beard, Matjaź Debaljak. Lior Eitan, standing in the breakfast queue with big stars, and Stewart McIlwham, Patricia Morris and the venerable everyone gets along. the www.bfs.org.uk magazine 5 pan • flute • News Late-night performances in the foyer were given by Lulu, accompanied on the guitar by Jun Kagami, while the rest of us drank and chatted. More high-octane performance came from the wonderful Adrianne Greenbaum, klezmer flute spe- cialist, who not only got the audience clapping and singing, but managed to get a few dozen people onto the platform of the Concert Hall where she taught them to dance. William Bennett, the doyen of British flute players, performed, as ravishingly as ever, with the Japanese flute quintet Concert Lumière.