Pan • Flute • News Youngest Was Nine); They Made up About a Quarter in Her Splendid Manner by Atarah Ben-Tovim
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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 41 Evenings at the Opera. The Volume 25 number 3 BFS Convention 2006. flute players of the Orchestra September 2006 of the Royal Opera House Editor Robert Bigio • Contacting the BFS Secretary Anna Munks 27 Eskdale Gardens Purley, Surrey CR8 1ET Telephone and fax 020 8668 3360 Email [email protected] Membership secretary 47 Oxford Flute Summer School: BFS AGM. Performance Plus and Geoffrey John Rayworth a twenty-first birthday The Nook, How Mill Gilbert adult amateur competitions. Local Brampton, Cumbria CA8 9JY events. Flute choir news. Concerts. The editor Telephone 01228 670306 comments not. Email [email protected] 51 Paul Edmund-Davies: Editorial Mozart and the flute Principally a flute player Robert Bigio 1 Doveridge Gardens London N13 5BJ 55 Music Exams: here for good? Telephone 020 8882 2627 Fax 020 8882 2728 Email [email protected] 57 Thumb rests: do we need them? Advertising Anna Munks 27 Eskdale Gardens 59 Reviews: CDs, music, books Purley, Surrey CR8 1ET Telephone and fax 020 8668 3360 Email [email protected] • Editorial advisory committee Robert Bigio Simon Hunt Mike MacMahon Rachel Brown: Mozart’s flute: Design and typesetting Robert Bigio 17 Magic, mediocre or maligned? Copy editing Christopher Steward 70 The small print • 27 Peter Spohr: The flutes of BFS Council and Officers. Area Representatives. Cover Flute in ivory with silver ferrules Mozart’s day Association of Flute Traders. Small and silver keys by Thomas Cahusac, advertisements. Announcements. London. Photograph by Peter Spohr. 35 Christopher Krueger: Which Membership information. Printed in the United Kingdom at the Glass is Best for Merlot? Which University Press, Cambridge 72 Richard Stagg has… Views expressed by contributors are their own and do Flute is Best for Mozart? not necessarily reflect the official view of the British The Last Word Flute Society. All copyrights reserved. Registered charity No. 326473 The aims of the British Flute Society: …to advance the education of the public in the Art and ISSN 1360-1563 Science of Music and in particular the Art and Science of Flute playing in all its aspects… www.bfs.org.uk A comprehensive set of titles to support the Associated Board's NEW JAZZ FLUTE exciting new Jazz Flute syllabus includes CD and piano accompaniment JAZZ FLUTE TUNES LEVEL/GRADE 1 JAZZ FLUTE AURAL TESTS & QUICK STUDIES LEVELS/GRADES 1–5 JAZZ JAZZ JAZZ FLUTE FLUTE LEVEL/GRADE 1 FLUTE LEVEL/GRADE 1 CD LEVELS/GRADES 1–5 TUNES AURAL TESTS & Jazz Flute CDs QUICK STUDIES Grades 4-5 One CD per grade 15 jazz tunes per grade with playalong tracks Can be used with The AB Real Book THE ASSOCIATED BOARD OF THE ROYAL SCHOOLS OF MUSIC THE ASSOCIATED BOARD OF THE ROYAL SCHOOLS OF MUSIC JAZZ FLUTE SCALES LEVELS/GRADES 1–5 Jazz Flute Tunes Jazz Flute Aural Tests & Grades 1-3 Quick Studies One book and CD per grade JAZZ Grades 1-5 15 tunes per grade in a wide FLUTE Learn to play in a creative and range of jazz styles LEVELS/GRADES 1–5 musical way and develop aural and musicianship skills SCALES Jazz Flute Scales Grades 1-5 Develop skills to play and improvise fluently and with confidence Available from music THE ASSOCIATED BOARD OF THE ROYAL SCHOOLS OF MUSIC retailers worldwide Associated Board Jazz Flute exams will be available from January 2007. For a free Jazz Sampler and information on courses and workshops contact [email protected] or visit www.abrsm.org/jazz, quoting PAN1. The AB Real Book 100 tunes offering a wealth of repertoire for all jazz players 30 of the tunes are set for the Grades 4 and 5 exams. Playalong tracks are included on the Jazz Flute CDs for those grades. www.abrsm.org • www.abrsmpublishing.com News • Convention 2006: a first report The hugely successful BFS Convention in Manchester ended just as we were about to go to press. These are some impressions by Mike MacMahon and Tony Ovenell, with photographs by Carla Rees Dawson. A longer report will follow in the December issue. Mike MacMahon writes: First impressions do matter. The just a few yards from the RNCM. This really was trains going into Piccadilly station in Manchester had an international event: there were flautists not ‘Manchester Picc’ on them, which I thought was a only from the UK, but Japan, Hong Kong, France, good omen for a flute convention. Then there was the Lithuania, Finland, the USA and many other places. cheery, efficient team at the reception desk, and the Hugely pleasing was the large contingent of younger good-quality (if Ikea-ish) student accommodation flautists (under the age of twenty-five or so—the The Gala Concert on the final evening of the convention included a performance by guest of honour William Bennett and five of his former students, with pianist Clifford Benson. Left to right: Matthias Ziegler, Denis Bouriakov, Petri Alanko, Lorna McGhee, William Bennett and Emily Beynon. The audience was in no doubt that this was a collection of some of the world’s very finest flute players. the www.bfs.org.uk magazine 3 pan • flute • News youngest was nine); they made up about a quarter in her splendid manner by Atarah Ben-Tovim. of the entire population. The in-house arrangements We sat faithfully in our seats and answered, with for eating and drinking, for making sure people varying degrees of accuracy, her special quiz based knew where the next event was taking place and on information in the June edition of Pan–The Flute when, and the proximity of the many trade stands Magazine. Atarah certainly knows how to wind up an (sagging with headjoints, piccolos, flutes, big flutes, audience! music, gadgets) were well organised. Trevor Wye put on the seven-minute opera by Alan Ridout called the Burning of Jan Palach, based on an event nearly forty years ago in Prague. Trevor taught the words and music there and then to about forty-five participants (minus their flutes). Given the circumstances of the work’s creation, we did not applaud. A forest of flutes at one of the stands in the trade hall. Fluting started in various forms at 7 in the morning on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and went on until well past 11 p.m. each night. You could warm up, you could sort out the reasons for any physiologi- cal stresses and strains when playing the flute, or you could ponder the hows, whys and wherefores of warming up. And all that before we had even had our breakfasts. There was a vast range of music, from the early eighteenth century to some world premieres, but a distinct emphasis could be found on music written expressly for the flute within the last twenty years. I slipped into a Teachers’ session on the new Rhonda Larson. Associated Board and Trinity Guildhall syllabuses. The new development is a specific set of exams for Friday’s first main concert was by the American jazz flute, something many teachers strongly wel- flautist, Rhonda Larson. This was outstanding. She comed. There was also some useful discussion about played a variety of music, from the medieval period one of the Jupiter flutes, specially re-designed for to the modern, drawing on different cultural styles, very young beginners; we can expect some strong and using different sorts of flute; her accompanist marketing of this in the months to come. Good! was a pre-recorded tape. For example, using a six- All this happened before the Convention had hole crystal flute she played The Boatman, based on officially started. It was opened and jollied along an old Scottish melody. There were people in the the 4 pan • flute magazine September 2006 News • audience in tears at the intense beauty of this per- whistling by the end, and no wonder. She played formance. Sadly, she was denied time for a much the Taktakishvili and Prokofiev sonatas. This was deserved encore. flute playing of extraordinarily high quality. The discussion of ‘extended techniques’ by Ian She was followed by Wissam Boustany, who, with Clarke concentrated on multiphonics and tongue- the young pianist Aleksandr Szram, did a bravura ramming, followed by a revealing short demonstra- performance, and entirely from memory, of sonatas tion of jazz on the flute. by Stankovych and Jongen. The Stankovych was Matthias Ziegler was back again this year, together written for Wissam, and he first performed it less with his contrabass and, amongst other flutes, a new than a year ago. We heard playing by both artists prototype bass. By fixing microphones inside the that was fearsomely passionate. The applause was flutes, he has created an entirely new soundscape thunderous. for the flute (or rather flutes), much of it far, far removed from what we traditionally associate with the instruments. Several flautists at this conven- tion were tongue-ramming, but Matthias has gone much further. He’s not just risen to new heights in extending the tonal range of the flute, but risen to new depths of sound. How many more people will venture into what he calls ‘solo polyphonic music’, I wonder. Alexa Still’s recital was packed out. Her pro- gramme was entirely to do with the Maori culture of her native New Zealand; she was accompanied at the piano, and at very short notice, by Timothy Wissam Boustany in the trade hall, engulfed by a contrabass flute. Carey. Alexa used much more than the Boehm flute.