In this lengthy interview with the great American flutist-composer Robert Dick, we talk about his early studies, his views on flute teaching and conservatory training, and his ideas on musicianship. Page down to find the interviews with Julius Baker and Claudi Arimany.

Interview with Robert Dick

April 2007.

 

Title: Music from within

 

I

 

PB – Talk to me about your studies as you see them now. What did you learn from your teachers?

 

 

RD - The flute teacher I worked with most was Henry Zlotnik. I was with Henry for about 8 years, from when I was 10 until18. At the time I really thought he was a great teacher. I found him inspiring and encouraging. In the scope of what he could do, which was essentially teaching me how to be an orchestral player, he was very good. From my perspective now, I see such enormous gaps. I was never asked to use my ear, I was never asked to understand what was going on harmonically, I was being asked to develop the basic skills that someone who would only be playing by reading music would need. Basically in a situation where the main interpretive decisions where coming from someone else, like a conductor. These skills included playing with a good musical feel, playing in tune and sight-reading impeccably, anything at any speed, at any time. Those were the things he focused on, and I thought I learned a great deal about them. But it certainly was not the kind of preparation that I would say a more complete musician needs. In years later, I found myself working to fill in the gaps, and I still feel there are gaps.

 

I left Henry to go to Julius Baker, because after 8 yrs with someone, I think it’s basically time to move on. I pretty much learned from Henry what he could offer me. I had started to get the definite sense that we were turning circles. I had heard Baker, and I needed to know how he could make a sound like that. I just had to get next to it. And with him too, his focus was for the strictly classical musician. As he would say: “I’m a notes guy”. Studies with him were geared towards people who were going to be orchestral players, and at the time that was my dream so it was totally cool with me. But as I out grew out of that dream, I realized that my training really hadn’t given me a look at music from the inside, which is what I needed. Most particularly, the idea that music is generated from hearing, hearing within and recognizing what you are hearing Things like that.  Like most classical students I developed a terrible phobia of ear training and playing by ear, because I couldn’t do it well.  And of course I assumed that meant I wasn’t any good at it and never could be good at it, not realizing that people who were good at it learn it from the beginning in little baby steps just like I’d learned the flute. In my own teaching I’m constantly gently taking peoples’ hands and introducing them to these other aspects of playing. It amazes me, at times it really dismays me, that still one can get people coming to graduate school without ever having improvised a note of their own, who have never played a note of music that came from within.  Sometimes when they begin, they can be paralyzed with fear, but once they learn there are simple and easy ways to begin, amazing doors open and this wonderful freedom begins to happen. But, like anything else, it all just has to be worked at.

 

I also had teachers on another side of things when I decided that I wanted to go to music school as a composer and not as a flutist. I studied with Robert Morris at the Yale School of Music, and I had studied with him as an under-graduate at Yale as well. That’s when I really began to learn about music from within. If I had to describe in three words what I learned from Robert Morris, it would be: “music from within”. He also encouraged me to open up my ears to all this amazing music that was happening in the world and not live inside the classical flute tunnel. I really believe that if you are a flutist, for example, you are a member of a worldwide flute family and you should really know the sounds and music of all these fantastic flute traditions that exist, they can only enrich you. So often in the classical tradition we are taught not to be curious. As a teacher, one of my main missions is just to teach people to be curious; because once you have awakened curiosity you have released an unstoppable force. The spirit that wants to know will not be denied. But sometimes that spirit needs permission to want to know, and a little bit of de-programming. I come upon students who come from conservatories with this kind of spirit, and they ask: “Is this really the way it ought to be?” and I say: Well, no. You don’t have to not pay attention to other things.

 

There is a certain amount of understandability about where it comes from. Each musical tradition is presented to the initiates as some gigantic thing that will totally consume your life, and even if you live to the age of 110 years you will just be scratching the surface of it, just of your own school. There is a certain degree of truth in that, I mean yes it’s a big undertaking, but this isn’t a very positive look at human potential. I mean how do people who do more able do it? They are not some other species. Mainly they simply had permission, they had initiative and they followed through. So I would say in all honesty, the main teacher that I have studied with is myself.

 

PB - Where was Henry Zlotnik and where did you study with him?

 

RD - I studied with him privately in NY. Henry was never affiliated with any of the conservatories. He had been a freelancer for years, he played piccolo in the NBC Symphony, and he played in the Sousa band, silent movie theaters and things like that. I think he came to America from Russia in about 1910, and he settled in Hartford. He was a student of Georges Barrère. I studied with him in his studio on West 48th St. Those were the days when West 48th St in Manhattan really was a musicians’ heaven.

 

PB – The period that lasted until the 1960’s and early 70’s was an age in New York and America of tremendous music production.

 

RD - It was based on the time when there simply was so much more live music, and where musicians of every kind had the opportunity to work. Musicians who only read music could work. Henry told me that before talking movies came in there was a city block; I think it was around Broadway or 7th Ave., and every Thursday afternoon contractors and musicians would meet there. You would just go and take your book and line up the next couple of weeks of work. He said that often there were so many musicians out there that the cops would have to come and chase them away because people couldn’t get through the street. There were hundreds, I’m not kidding, hundreds of flute jobs btw 14th and 59th Streets, and 1st Ave, and 8th Avenue in Manhattan. First, when you were a kid you played in silent theaters in the outer boroughs in these little funky groups, and as you got better you gradually moved into Manhattan, and if you really got good you could play in the RKO Symphony. There was actually a guy who quit the New York Philharmonic to play principal in the RKO Symphony because it was a better job, economically speaking.

 

PB – I remember Tom Nyfenger telling me that Julius Baker spoke to him about doubts he had at the time about accepting the New York Philharmonic position when it was offered to him in the 60’s. Tell me about your studies with James Papoutsakis and Thomas Nyfenger.

 

RD – Sure, I also studied several summer times with James Papoutsakis, the first one was when I was 15 or 16 in the Boston University High School Program. First off, it’s important to say that I went there with Henry Zlotnik’s blessing. There was no territoriality, or “I don’t want anyone else messing with you”, or any of those attitudes. He told me these exact words: “ I want you to study with Papoutsakis”. So I went there completely uncluttered by any loyalty issues, or things like that which kids naturally feel.

Popoutsakis transformed my playing in the first ten minutes. I was playing very tight and turned in, I had concentrated a lot on technique until that point.

 

 

And he demonstrated something which I have taken totally to heart in my own teaching style too, he made it a point of always telling you the good news before he told you what he really wanted to get to work on. He complimented me on my technique and he said I had achieved quite a lot, and that there were a lot of college students who would do well to have the technique that I had already acquired in high school. And then he said: “For sound, have you ever thought of sounding a little more like this?” He then demonstrated and it was really beautiful. You know tone was not one of Henry Zlotnik’s strong points, and suddenly I heard a really great flute tone right there next to me. He then asked if he could see my flute and he reached out and he turned the headjoint out about 30 degrees, it was really major. He said “Why don’t you try it like this?” I tried it, and it was just another world, instantly. You know, Papoutsakis was the kindest and gentlest of souls, and I think like all of his students I had great affection for him. But again, his focus was strictly on classical playing. There was no mention of playing by ear, there was no mention of improvising. Nor was there was no mention of even making your own cadenza to a Mozart concerto, nothing in that regard. I guess that is because those guys had careers that only asked them to do this kind of notes only playing.

 

 

The world has changed big time, and I’m not sure that someone entering the world today who is only able to play from the written notes has really got a professional future unless they are very, very lucky and one of the very, very few. Basically the notes only players’ future is as an amateur, and that tradition will be kept up in the amateur realm.

 

PB – Tell me about your contact with Tom Nyfenger and how he might have had some input into growth going deeper into the music.

 

RD – Well, when I got to Tom Nyfenger I was a second year graduate student at the Yale School of Music, and I had not actually taken flute lessons seriously since my freshman year. So it had been a period of four years that I hadn’t taken more than a half a dozen or ten lessons. I had wanted to work by myself. I started the flute when I was eight years old, I had taken an awful lot of flute lessons and I really needed to work by myself. I know I was doing that a lot earlier that most people do, but my flute training started a lot earlier and it was a lot more intensive than most peoples’. So I was a second year composition student when I decided to take lessons with Tom. I thought maybe it was time to get some perspective on things, and I had kept hearing all these good things about Tom Nyfenger. And they were also paid for by the university. So Tom did not audition me, and he hadn’t accepted me. All of a sudden there I was. Our personal chemistry was not positive.  However Tom was driven by some sense of duty. I mean it was his job to sort of impart the information, so he did it. What I liked about his teaching was that he was the first player I had ever met, at an extremely high level, who could be articulate about it. I mean there

 

were many great things about Julius Baker’s teaching but really being articulate in words was not a strong feature of his. Every once in a while he would work really hard and put something into language, but it just wasn’t his way. I don’t think he was analytical in a verbal sense.

 

I liked the fact that Tom was basically saying to his students; “Look this is a whole other level now. You’re preparing to enter the profession; you are preparing to play like an adult. These habits that you have, the way you have interpreted music until now, with these sort of kid like interpretations, comes about because you are taking your interpretations from your teachers. Now is time to make your interpretations yourself.”

 

 

Because he could play by ear, Tom demonstrated to me that a classical musician could actually be a musician of a higher level. At that time I had already begun to improvise, and had actually begun to perform improvised concerts with a vibraphonist named Bobby Noughton. And so I was in the process of waking up my interior musician, and it was great to see that a classical musician didn’t have to be so hidebound. Robert Morris demonstrated what could happen if you had a great ear that was really connected as well.

 

 

PB – Since we are on flute pedagogy: How do you see the evolution of flute pedagogy in the U.S. and elsewhere in the past 25 years? What you might see as some of the most significant currents, and what you think your relationship has been with that?

 

RD - I wish that American flute pedagogy had evolved more in the last 25 yrs. I don’t think it has changed really all that much. There are certainly some of us out there really pushing very hard, but I don’t think the behemoth has moved a whole lot. I think that most teachers are orchestral based musicians and are essentially teaching what their teachers taught them. I don’t see a lot of teachers whose input is significantly wider than the input of their instructors.

 

That said, it hasn’t just been in a stasis, there has been motion. The playing of contemporary music is a bit more out there then it used to be. Although all too often people will show up for a master class and play Density 21.5 which was the big hit of 1936.

 

I almost never get a graduate student who has played the Berio Sequenza, and I would have hoped that that piece would have migrated more to under-graduate curriculum by now, at least for a first time. The other thing is that I’m not hearing enough transplanting into American flute playing of more international ideas. You know French school articulation has been around for an awful long time, it works better, why aren’t people using it? That doesn’t mean we have to become French school players.

 

I think a lot of important growth for a young musician takes place outside the flute studio, where people have more freedom to experiment, and where people do more new music. I think that an important part of the progress in American musical education has come from the fact that more schools have contemporary music and improvisation groups. It is natural that an important part of the positive influence in a lot of people’s development is coming from outside the flute studio. That was certainly true for me, and I think it remains true today. When you meet people for whom creativity is a way of life, it’s hard not to be effected in a real positive way.

 

PB – I’m referring also to the fact that people like Tom Nyfenger, who became an important teacher in New York because he was so articulate at analyzing what players like Julius Baker and Rampal were doing, your own contributions, and those of people like Keith Underwood and Arnold Jacobs, to cite two names.

 

RD – The actual degree of knowledge to anyone who is seeking it, is exponentially higher. There is no question about that. The things that used to be totally mysterious have been figured out. And yes, Nyfenger was certainly an important early figure in that. I suppose Nyfenger was quite influenced by Kincaid who had more to say than any teacher of his time. In a book like Kincaidiana, which Nyfenger was certainly very enthusiastic about, there was a high level of thought process. Nyfenger built a great deal on that. I do think his crowning accomplishment was his book “Music and the Flute”. I’m so glad that Tom followed through and really completed that; because now that Tom is gone that distillation of his thoughts is really helpful.

 

In my own work, I’m just someone who really wants to know. I feel very frustrated if there is a barrier between myself and something I want to understand. I believe I have helped to integrate acoustics with flute playing and I have tried to understand certain mysterious things like why one can have good and bad days when you are practicing everyday. This led me to throat tuning, which is connecting knowledge with acoustics and it helped me to understand what is happening and why when a flutist never misses. This is something that players just didn’t know or didn’t know how to articulate.

 

So, I do think that significant progress has been made in flute pedagogy. My wish is that many of these points we have mentioned here would be able to percolate more quickly into the larger flute community.

 

PB – It can seem sometimes that instrumental pedagogy is overly conservative and is reluctant to adopt the new.

 

RD – Well, traditions seem to have a built-in conservative inertia which keep them focused, and it’s the balance between that and new influences which is essential. The tradition which is not open to new influence is moribund, but on the other hand the tradition that doesn’t keep some kind of sight on it’s core values is adrift. It’s finding the balance between the two. There are a lot of the things in the pedagogical tradition which I think are really great. It’s really not a matter of throwing the baby out with the bath water at all. But I wish the centerline would move just a bit more towards the influence of all this wonderful work by the folks you’ve named and others. Another example of that is Betty Bang Mather and all the work she has done on how you actually create baroque music from within. Why her book on the cadenza isn’t studied by everybody baffles me.

 

PB – How do you keep the old repertoire alive for yourself and how does improvisation help you do that? Do you take the harmonic progressions and extend them and transpose them? What are some of the ways you work?

 

RD. If a piece a music from the past is going to have a real meaning in our life-time, we have to find a way of coming to terms with it, each in our own way. That has always been true, it was true when the Partita was first written, and it has remained through the years up until today. But we are not living in 1718, so we naturally need to be informed by the performance practice and musical language of the time. To take an idea and just carry on a bit in any number of ways you have just mentioned can help you a great deal to understand the music better. If you yourself can make a phrase go some place with it and then take it back, and then see how a master like Bach did it, a light goes on and you say to yourself: “Oh, I get it!” This is music from within and not just from the outside.

 

What is most commonly misunderstood by classical musicians, both teachers and students, is that this kind of improvisational approach means that we just throw all the old ways, and that it just doesn’t have any meaning for the older music. That is just simply not true at all. The older music was played by musicians who were trained as musicians and who played instruments. Starting in the 19th century, we’ve been trained as instrumentalists. We need to reclaim our heritage. Because that’s what it is, musicianship is our heritage. If a bunch of kids in a garage band can do it, why can’t a bunch of conservatory or college and professional flutists do it too? I’m often asked, “Why should I learn those things?” and my first response is, well the real question is: why shouldn’t you? Why is knowing more music worse that knowing less music? Why is being able to do less better than being able to do more? Why is looking at things in two dimensions better than looking at things in three?

 

You know classical performers like Vladimir Horowitz composed music their whole life, even if they didn’t play it in public. Horowitz had terrible stage fright and to reveal himself as composer was probably more than he could handle. Walter Gieseking, the great pianist and interpreter of Debussy and Chopin, was a terrible composer, but the fact that he wrote pieces enabled him to understand Debussy in a way he never would have able to, if he had not composed something himself.  

 

 

PB – On thing we have seen in the past 25 years is a growth of the use extended techniques.  With the NFA competitions, young players learning pieces like your Flying Lessons and other pieces, along with many contemporary composers now using these techniques.

 

 

RD – That is true!  And it is exciting to see that happen in a more wide spread way and to see other flutist-composers pick up these techniques and use them in their own musical language, with varying styles and varying degrees of success. But it has become a thing that people are doing, and that is something that I get great satisfaction from.

 

PB – What are you recording and pieces that have had the most success?

 

RD – The publication that has sold the most is Tone Development Through Extended Techniques. There are more than 10,000 copies in print. The recording that has sold more than any other is The Other Flute. I would like flutists to be catching up on the many, many other recordings I’ve made since then. Nevertheless, I’m always happy when somebody wants a copy of The Other Flute. It was my absolute best playing the day I made that record back in 1984. That is a while ago, but still has that feeling and that energy that this is really somebody is really giving it his all. I find that I can listen to it with pleasure even though I know that the playing and the music have grown enormously since then.

 

PB – What pieces of yours have become most popular?

 

RD – Well, Look Out is by far the most performed piece. I wrote that for the first NFA High School Soloist Competition commission. I wrote it very deliberately in a well-known style, it’s really a rock’n roll piece. I wanted to put new techniques into a musically understood context that was going to be easy to grasp and get a sense of it, so that kids would really know what this is all about. That piece has really become a standard, I’ve heard it many, many times. I see people studying it from many different flute studios. So I would say Look Out more than any other piece.

 

Flying Lessons Volume I has been successful, at least the first couple of them have been studied a lot. As they get more difficult, more people start falling by the wayside a bit. Flying Lessons Volume II which is much more difficult, but which I feel goes into some amazing places musically, is not studied all that much. Someone really has to want to make a real commitment to playing the flute in this way because the difficulty level is high. But the it’s only high because that is what the music demands. Afterlight has become a solid part of the repertoire. And very, very slowly I am starting to hear people play Flames Must Not Encircle Sides. As circular breathing starts to sink in in this country. The United States is way behind Europe in terms of circular breathing; it’s just standard practice there. It’s still considered exotic and somewhat dangerous here. However, European flutists don’t play all that much American music, which is a pity because there are a lot of students there who could play Flames Must Not Encircle Sides. On both sides of the coin, Americans don’t know that much European music in the contemporary sphere, and Europeans don’t that much American music. It is kind of a pity.

 

PB – One of the problems in the European system is that the teacher generally has to have played a piece for it to be able to get onto the repertory list, whereas in the U.S, there is bit more freedom for a student to bring in new repertory that the teacher does not know.

 

RD – Yes that’s true. It’s in one sense they are more advanced and in another more rigid.

 

 

PB – As a composer and player who lives from your music, tell me your thoughts about illegal copying.

 

 

RD – To anyone and everyone, I would just say about illegal copying: please don’t do it.

It is stealing and when musicians steal from each other, how can we ask the world to respect us? And we are not in a position where the world is giving us a whole lot of respect as it is. You wouldn’t expect a composer to open your case and steal your foot joint, then why is it ok to steal a composer’s music? A lot of times kids just don’t know or they don’t realize what it represents, and I think it is something that teachers just need to be more clear about. It’s just something that is so easy to do, and it’s done commonly. Going into a store and putting a sweater into your backpack and seeing if you can get out the door feels like a different thing, but in essence it isn’t. Part of the reason that there is less music in print instead of more is that publishers feel that because of copying, there is no way to get the return on the expense of publishing the piece. It makes music disappear and that isn’t a good thing.

 

PB – How about the flutists you admire, from anywhere in the world?

 

RD – The flutist I admire most is Hari Prasad Chaurasia, a north Indian classical flutist. I have more cds by him than any other flutist, and he is the only flutist that when I see one that I don’t have, I buy it. I think he is such an incredibly great artist, an incredible flutist and an incredible musician. He is a north Indian classical player and he plays raga at a really sublime level. The way he creates melodies and develops them is quite remarkable. The people who know that music consider him a great artist. He isn’t just a good flutist.

 

In jazz, I was always a great fan of Eric Dolphy. I just wish that he had lived past his thirties and had a chance to really develop and do more, it was just such a great tragedy.

Rampal is my favorite classical flutist. When Rampal was playing well, he not only was not only just a sublime flutist but also a great interpretive artist. He went deeper into the meaning of the classical repertoire than any other modern flutist that I have ever heard.

In baroque playing, Bart Kuijken is somebody who I listen to a lot. I love the Shakuhachi playing of Katsuo Yokohama. And when it comes to sheer melodic beauty, it’s hard to top Jimmy Galway. So hard that nobody has done it.

 

PB - How about composers that have become important figures for you in your life?

 

RD - Bach for one, that’s for sure.

 

PB – Why Bach?

 

RD – Well, because of the depth of the music. I find that every time I go back into one of his pieces I seen things I hadn’t seen before and that work. And that is just incredible to me. I teach the Partita many times every year, and find that it just gets deeper and deeper and is more and more fascinating each time. I just never get tired of Bach, I never get bored. And that’s a tall order, I can get bored easily. I think like a lot of creative people, one of the things that makes us creative, we are not just accepting of the given and loose interest in things once we understand something. And so for something that I have lived with intensely for as long as I have, to continue to be more interesting is remarkable. So, my hat is of to Bach.

 

Debussy is someone I have always been inspired by, and Takemitsu’s music is of great meaning to me as well. I also have to say I am a big fan of my teacher Robert Morris’ music. I also know him and I know how his music comes about too. That fact helps and it is important too. I find his music very significant and feel that he should be more known.

 

In the flute world, I think Karg-Elert is under appreciated and the thirty caprices are the best set of traditional studies ever written. There is just so much to learn from them, and I teach them almost every year and I practice them a lot. I find those little condensed, very intense stylistic studies are very helpful especially in one’s grown-up life when you don’t have as much time to practice as when you were a student. You really have to make the most out of the time that you have, and those are really worth giving time to.

 

Jimi Hendrix is a composer who has been hugely influential to me. As a performer, his incredible freedom and ability to go just where ever his imagination led him. His music was driven by a great passion and intensity. And then as you actually learn his music you see how well it is written and how fascinating it is.

 

There have been various blues players I’ve listened to a lot, Albert King and Buddy Guy. And then I listen to a lot of world music, music where you don’t necessarily know who the composer is. The Balinese gamelan music is important to me. And George Harrison also is an important composer to me, I love his music.

 

PB – So, what we are really talking about here is a certain breakdown of distinction of styles today, and the ability to be influenced by any number of different approaches to music that are so abundantly within our reach.

 

RD – Yes, we are so fortunate today that so much music is available to us. It was so difficult for others in the past to be able to experience such a wide range of music. Why should one not have one’s ears open? It all feeds the self, and music comes from the self.

 

 

I believe improvising should be part of every musician’s musical day. So often classical musicians treat it as an extra, and I think it’s at the center of things along with the other important things.

 

 

PB – What are some of your current projects?

 

 

RD – My most current performance project is my duo with Ursel Schlicht, pianist and composer extraordinaire. We have recently released a duo CD called Photosphere, that’s on the NEMU label, which stands for New European Music. Ursel and I have been developing our music over the last three years or so. In a way, we are kind of re-inventing the piano flute duo, really bringing in a combination of composition and improvisation as our modus operandi.

 

I am also in a very occasional group called King Chubby, which is a trio, a somewhat ambient band with Ed Bialek on synthesizers and sequencers, and Will Ryan, a fellow who chants and plays small percussion. The Band has been in existence for a long time and I have been with them for eight or nine years now. We have been through different incarnations, we’ve been up to five players with bass and drums, but we are now back to the core trio.

 

As for commissions, I am working a woodwind quintet which is a Meet the Composer consortium commission for three quintets: the Sylvan Winds in New York, the Sierra Winds in Las Vegas and the ---------Quintet in Boston. I’m also working on a saxophone quartet for the New Century Saxophone Quartet. In December I finished a solo flute piece for Elizabeth McNutt called Babylonish Gabble.

 

 

PB – Your titles always grab the attention.

 

RD – Titles are really important. I mean they really can give you the handle into the piece sometimes. Sometimes I’ll encounter something and I’ll think it’s a great title. And I’ve learned to write them down and I try not to forget them. So I have a file of potential titles. Sometimes none of the ideas for titles are going to work and you have to make a title for a piece. But sometimes the title inspires the composition. My most interesting experience with a title is a piece for flute and live electronics. It’s called A Black Lake with a Blue Boat On It. That is a line from a routine by the comedian named Lord Buckley.

The piece was being played on WKCR, the Columbia University radio station at about three in the morning in about 1995, and a fellow writing Lord Buckley’s biography heard it, got the info about the record, got a hold of the label, got my address, sent me a letter, and we’ve become good friends. Recently I actually played on the Lord Buckley Centennial Birthday bash. So because of that title I put a message in a bottle, threw it out into the ocean and actually got an answer back.

 

Babylonish Gabble was the comment that an English critic made about double tongued music. An English critic or flutist referred to this new fangled thing; double-tonguing, as “babylonish gabble”. Elizabeth McNutt actually told me this and said that’s it, that’s the title of your piece! Over the years I’ve become more and more interested in inter-connecting speech into my music. Internet spammers will often send these big blocks of random words in an attempt to get through spam filters, and I started to just copy them all down. Now I have got hundreds of pages of this stuff and so I used that as the text. She speaks through the flute and sings and plays with it, all sorts of things. And sometimes it comes out in this bizarre unconscious poetry that no one could write, because it was just a computer using some algorhythms searching a word list. I have also of course worked with real writers and the piece I wrote for the NFA Young Artists competition in 2003, Everyone@Universe.existence was collaboration with the poet Marvin Bell.

 

PB – Approaching improvisation in a duo collaboration, would you like to make some comments about how you and Ursel work together?

 

RD – Well, more than anything else, it’s all about listening. You know, in a way, playing music is just a really active form of listening. It’s how you hear each other. As we work on each piece we do define what it’s going to be about. Every piece is a kind of story and that means it’s about something or a couple of things, and it’s not about everything else. A common misconception about improvisation is that you just play anything. When that happens, of course, it all sounds the same. So we work with the thematic material if it’s a piece that has composed or thematic material, or in another case we are conscious of how the trajectory is going to work; that meaning whether we are we going to start in a percussive area with inside the piano things and key percussion and breath sounds and evolve towards more melodic playing, for example.  Or sometimes we just play free and it’s a kind of conversation. It’s such a cliché that playing music is a conversation, but it is a conversation. And we work to make it a fun, eloquent and intelligent one.

I think one of the ethics that characterizes our duo is texture. When I use the glissando headjoint, that inspires Ursel to find something on the piano that is equivalent to that and to do a glissando and find a sound which corresponds to the glissando which traditional piano and flute cannot do. And when I say to re-define or re-invent, or find new things for the vocabulary, that is a very important aspect of our playing together. We both work with textures in which you would never be able to tell that it’s piano and flute. I do a lot of percussive things which can be done on the piano too, especially when you put objects inside of it, or play inside of it with mallets. So we have a whole range of textures that are different from regular keyboard and flute sounds. I feel that this is what distinguishes our duo from other groups that Ursel and I play in and other flute and piano improvisational duos.

 

PB – Do you start with some pieces with written ideas as an agreed point of departure, in some cases, and know where you might transition to something else?  Are some ideas jotted down?

 

RD – Well, sometimes there is considerable more than just a few ideas jotted down, sometimes there is a good composed piece to take off from. So there will be a lot of ideas imbedded in that, that we use.

 

We also think about the arquitecture of the whole improvised set when we play live. On the recent Photosphere duo cd, it’s the first half of a live concert. The reason it works is because there is a mixture of themes that we improvise over, or free ideas, and other structures that we think about, rather than just melody. There is piece on the cd which is only about rhythmic fragments, and another piece about Korean court music and Ursel emulates that inside the piano. Each piece guides the listener through a different idea. Both of us feel that free improvisation sometimes can get a little predictable if people fall into the same places in several pieces, so we try to avoid that.

 

PB – So you are always thinking in terms of the architecture of a whole set or concert.

Yes, you are thinking about the form of each piece, the range of idea within each piece, and then how to put it together so that you have as much variety as you can within a complete concert.

 

RD – A concert is a concert and whether you are playing composed pieces, the way you put them together in the programming is so important for the total experience. And if it’s an improvised concert, it is still a concert that is still is a concert, and the way the pieces work together is creating something that is more than just the individual pieces. For those who are taking their first steps in thinking about putting some improvisation into their concert, it’s also a matter of thinking of how you are going to include it so that the program will work as a whole.

 

I remember back in my twenties playing a classical first half, some new music in the second half, and then ending improvising with the pianist. That way can be a good way to start.

 

I did this interview with Julius Baker in 1994. Although he later asked me not to publish it, his widow Ruth Baker gave me permission to let it out into the world.

Maestro Baker gives us his views about his training with William Kincaid, and on a host of other subjects. I enjoyed the session with him alot.

 

Julius Baker Interview - September 1994

 

P: Who were your important teachers?

 

J: William Kincaid (former principal flute, Philadelphia Orchestra) at the Curtis Institute and the teachers connected with Curtis: Marcel Tabateau (former principal oboe, Philadelphia Orchestra), Carlos Salzedo (former solo harpist, Philadelphia Orchestra) and others .

 

 

P: Who did William Kincaid study with?

 

J: He studied with Georges Barrere at the Curtis Institute, and with Philipe Gaubert a bit. One time he showed me pictures of him in Paris. I beleive that is when he studied with Gaubert.

 

P: What were the most important things that you learned from Kincaid?

 

J: He was a very gifted teacher. He brought the best out of everybody. He wasn't one to always find fault with you, and he was always encouragirig. I learned a great deal about how to be a teacher from him. I kept a diary while studying with him that shows he was a very thorough and no-nonsense

teacher. But at the same time he was always very kind and encouraging, as I said before. That's why he had so many successful students: Joseph Mariano (former principal flute, Rochester Philharmonic, Eastman School of Music), Maurice Sharp (former principal flute, Cleveland Orchestra, Cleveland Institute of Music), Donald Peck (principal flute, Chicago Symphony), Albert Tipton, Harold Bennett (highly regarded freelancer and teacher in New York), and George Maury, Jake Bird, a whole bunch. Donald Peck is the youngest of the older guys I don't want to leave anybody out so you better make a list. Right now I can't think of them all.

 

Adel Perkins was another, and I think Doriot Dwyer (former principal flute, Boston Symphony) studied with Kincaid also, Francis Blaisdell as well (first successful women freelance flutist in New York).

 

 

P: What did you learn about sound and vibrato from Kincaid?

 

J: You have to remember that vibrato in those days meant the Georges Barrere (student of Taffenel who emigrated to the United States and transmitted the french style to generations of american flutists) style of fast vibrato, which was exemplified by Barrere, John Wummer (principal flute of the New York Philharmonic before Julius Baker) and Kincaid. It was a different concept. When we younger guys came along, we were warned about a fast vibrato. Do you want to stop the tape for just a minute and I'll get my lesson diary? (gets diary)

 

I'll skip the bit about the German lessons. You know, I think it's very important to learn at least two languages. I can get along in french and spanish, and my wife Ruth helps me with italian.

 

Look here, Kincaid tells me to go listen to the records of Marcel Moyse playing the Mozart concertos in G ,D and C, as well as the Debussy sonata. Here are some of the pieces I studied: Hue Fantasy, Ibert Concerto. Can you imagine that? Kincaid told me the Ibert was impossible, and yet I had to do the first performance in the U.S. when I came to play with the CBS Symphony Orchestra, in 1947.

 

Here are the lessons of 1935 and 36. It gets very technical: "Have the lips prepared on the preceeding note for the note coming". These are notes of an 18 and 19 year old kid ... IITry for a big tone, play the intervals ". I also kept a record of the hours practiced.

 

Here: "Instead of making a crescendo by blowing harder, pinch the lips and use the same amount of air". Also "Pinch the lip and tongue the air". That's an interesting concept. I want to show you about the vibrato, "Leave out the wa-wa in the tone. II You see? I had a slow vibrato then and they weren't used to that.

 

P: You got your slower vibrato from your father, is that correct?

 

J: That's right. I tried to get a fast vibrato, but I couldn't do it. I tried and tried but I couldn't get it. Kincaid kept telling me repeatedly to get the wawa out of my tone. Here again: "Leave out the wa-wa in the tone. II

 

P: So he had the fast "nanny-goat" vibrato, as we say?

 

 

J: Yes, he had the fast vibrato, but he changed later on. I noticed that in about 1950. His playing was different and he had changed his vibrato.

 

P: Did you ever talk about it with him?

 

J: No, because--you know -- he was my teacher (laughing). But he had to change because other players were coming up that didn't have the fast vibrato.

 

P: Why do you think that the slower vibrato and deeper vibrato took over?

 

J: Kids hear and assimilate automatically, that's why I say speaking a language is very good. When older people take up a language they seem to have trouble getting rid of an accent. But if you take a young kid of seven or eight years and he studies and speaks a foreign language he'll be able to do it.

 

P: With a perfect accent.

 

J: With no accent, so to speak. Now why is that? It's the same thing in playing. Kids hear, and you don't hear a fast vibrato today because the kids don't hear a fast vibrato. Who has a fast vibrato that you can think of today?

 

P: Well nobody anymore except for players that we might think of as being archaic.

 

J: I didn't think that we'd get off on this kind of subject, but it's very interesting.

 

P: We would think of that "nanny-goat" vibrato today as being unsatisfying. I recall what you said to me on the telephone recently: that it's the coloratura soprano that naturally had a vibrato like that.

 

J: If you listen to old recordings of Gally Kootchie, the coloratura soprano,

 

and then listen to coloratura sopranos today, you'll hear that they don't have that fast vibrato. It's a thing of the past. Where do you hear it? Not even

 

in singing.

 

 

P: Why do you think it's a thing of the past?

 

J: I repeat, because that is what kids hear. I think one of the reasons is because of popular singers. They don't sing with a fast vibrato, they can't. But when you hear a singer like Pavarotti or Placido Domingo they can fit into any kind of a piece.

 

P: Because they adapt their sound. They adapt their vibrato.

 

J: That's a good subject, the fast vibrato, because we're not using the terminology "slow vibrato. II

 

P: Right. Because it's not really a slow vibrato.

 

J: The vibrato's in the sound.

 

P: Some people play it too slow but it's not a slow vibrato. Did you learn about vibrato from Caruso Records?

 

J: I listened his records. Have you ever seen the Caruso book, "How to Sing"?

 

P: I've seen pages from it.

 

J: What convinced me about my way of vibrato was when I got to the Bach Aria Group and started working with singers. Then I knew I was on the right track as far as the vibrato went. Because that was a big bone of contention in those days, you know, 55 years ago, when I first came to New York.

 

P: Did you learn from doing a lot of recordings? Did you learn from other players and having the microphone placed close to you?

 

J: Yes. That's why I always say that you yourself are your best teacher. I had to record with the Bach Aria Group and we constantly heard the playbacks of the recordings. I learn~~<:~I;,at!l}y,r~~' Lu~~~~~ I was working j with some really great singers, Eilleen Farrel, Jan Pierce, and some great instrumentalists, Robert Bloom on oboe, Maurice Wilk, Bernard Greenhouse. I mean, with fine musicians like that and you learn, you learn from each other.

 

 

 

P: But the vibrato on the string instrum~nts hasn't changed as much as the vibrato on the wind instruments.

 

J: That's right. But you know what's very interesting? These young kids today, they pick up the fiddle at 14, 15 years old, they sound like Heifetz, because they hear these things. It's remarkable. I say Heifetz, I could say Zuckerman and Perlman too.

 

P: Did Kincaid get very detailed with you?

 

 

J: He analyzed everything, and that's why I wrote everything down.

 

We didn't have recordings in those days, you know, so I had to write everything down, and I drew pictures.

 

P: How did your way of thinking about playing and your approach change from age 22 to age 42?

 

J: That's a good question. Playing in the orchestra is the best education because you play great music. You hear world-class soloists performing with the orchestra, and you start to wonder what makes them great. I'll

 

never forget Clifford Curzan , the legendary english pianist. He had a

 

golden tone, and he played without any affectation, but why did it sound so great? For one, was a very thorough musician.

 

Now I had played all 27 Mozart piano concertos with Dame Myra Hess when I was in the Chicago Symphony and then I came to the New York Philharmonic and Clifford CUI.£an comes out to play Concerto No. 11. So I went up to him during the break in rehearsals and I said, "Do you know all 27 Concertos?" He said, "No. I'm working on the 12th one now. I just finished studying the 11 th." I told him that he was very modest. But that's how thorough he was. I said to him, "You don't trill from above do you?" He said, "Well, it's not Baroque music." So that's what made me change my mind about the Mozart Flute Concertos, not to start the trills from above, which I had heard other players, fine players, do. But I was so impressed by Clifford Curzhn's intelligence, his command of the instrument" that I learned from him. That's why I say that by playing in an orchestra you really learn. I always felt that when I went to rehearsal I was going for a lesson, that was my attitude.

 

 

P: You've always had such a reputation for being a very hard working player when it comes to practicing, famous for that. There are others who work hard too, but their work doesn't payoff. They can practice for for hours and hours, and years and years, and still not sound beautiful.

 

J: It takes a long time to learn how to practice. Did you see that article about Midori in the New York Times last week?

 

P: No.

 

J: Oh I should have saved it, because they were talking about what's the difference between a great artist and a good artist. Practice! She said she

 

practices five hours a day.

 

P: But people practice and they burn out too. People practice and they

 

don't acheive those results.

 

J: Well I can't think of any remedies. I'll tell you the story of what the lady next door once said to my mother. "Ma'am, there must be something wrong with your boy. He plays that flute all day long. Why?" My mom said, "Well, he loves it." That was the only answer. Nobody stopped me.

 

P: You did it and you loved it.

 

J: I did it because I loved it. So here I am at the age of 79 and I still

 

practice. I have to because I had to play a recital last week. And I'm playing at the Kennedy Center with the Carnegie Melon Institute Orchestra.

 

 

A piece by Lleonard Balada.

 

P: Oh yes, the Catalan composer at Carnegie-Mellon in Pittsburgh.

 

J: Yes. He has arranged the violin concerto slow movement for flute. He feels that a flute will have a better sound for it. He loves the flute.

 

P: How did you learn from doing so many recordings?

 

J: Kincaid once told me -- Mr. Kincaid I should say, but everybody called him Billy, you know that -- he said, "You are your best teacher. Now you're the one who's going to be the player. Your teacher isn't always going to be around to tell that you did this and you did that. You have to

learn by listening to yourself." And that's how I learned. How am I going to do it this way, that way? You experiment. And I used to listen to Heifetz and Casals -- I should have mentioned Casals because he was the other famous instrumentalist in those days. They were our role models. I'll show you the pictures I have downstairs of Heifetz. I also have one of Casals and one of Bjeorling. When I heard Bjeorling sing the first time I couldn't believe it. All you have to do is hear him.

 

So I think it's a mater of being in the right environment for a young person to be in music. Not just the flute, music. That's important. So that's why I recommend to kids they get an orchestra job so that they can learn something about music. Because I know that today everybody wants to be a soloist and the preparation for a soloist is playing in the orchestra. I always

 

tell the story about Itzak Perlman and Eugene Zuckerman and Glenn

 

Dicterow (concert master of the New York Philharmonic). They were at

 

Julliard at the same time. Now they tried to get out of playing in the orchestra. But Zukermann and Periman had to play in the orchestra. The only one who got out of it was Dictorow. So what happened later on in life? Perlman and Zukerman are the soloists, and Dictorow is the concert master at the New York Philharmonic. Funny, though, isn't it?

 

Of course, my theory doesn't mean that I'm right, you know. I think you can still be a great player and that you don't have to play in an orchestra, but I think it's certainly a great preparation. I don't like the terminology "flute soloist. " You're a flutist.

 

 

P: You're a musician.

 

J: A musician. If you're lucky enough to make your living as a soloist, without having to play in an orchestra, fine. But I think you're missing an awful lot. For me, you can't beat sitting in the middle of a Brahms or a Beethoven symphony. Like my mother said to my sister when they came to hear me play the first time in the Cleveland Orchestra. She said,"We have to be nice to Julius. He sits right in the middle of that orchestra. And he hears that music all day long." I don't know if that exists today in young people, that concept of wanting to play in an orchestra because of the music.

 

P: People are more concerned about getting a job now.

 

 

J: Who wants to play second flute or piccolo in an orchestra today? I mean, is that their ambition? I don't think so.

 

P: Most people would prefer a principal job, but there aren't many available. They are travelling all over the country to audition for second flute and piccolo jobs, just to get a position, or move to a better orchestra.

 

J: Well that's the way things are done now. But in my day it didn't work that way. I mean, it was an honor to play in the orchestra. But often a last resort now to play in the orchestra. I don't think that should be the last resort.

 

 

Oh! I wanted to talk to you before about rhythm and jazz, which IS a terrific field.

 

P: There's no question about it.

 

J: I've always admired people who play jazz. Improvising is just like playing ornamentation in baroque music.

 

P: What would you say the differences are between the American flute playing and the French flute playing? What are the differences in style and approach.

 

J: I once wrote an article in Woodwind Magazine in which I talked about one of the popular pastimes when we were younger of listening to records and guessing what orchestra it was. We could tell what orchestra it was by listening to the flutist. You could tell an English flutist because they didn't use any vibrato at all. Same thing with German flute players. You could spot a French flute player right off the bat because if course they were using vibrato.

 

However, today I think that flute playing has become very international. I heard that when I was in Munich recently. I listened to flutists from all over the world. I was very impressed by the high level of playing, and I think the relationship between the players is very similar now. I heard some marvelous German flutists.

 

P: O.K., then what is the difference between your way of playing, and the way Rampal plays, for instance?

 

9

 

J: Well, I feel that there is no such thing as French piano playing, or French violin playing, or cello playing. Why do we try to label flute playing as French flute playing? I resent that. I wasn't lucky enough to be born French. I say that sarcastically, because beleive me, there are a lot of players all over the world who are not French and who are good players. It's the talent that counts.

 

P: You mean it doesn't matter anymore where a person comes from?

 

 

J: No it absolutely does not matter, because people have ways of educating themselves today. It's not the dark ages any more when it comes to musicians and musicianship. You have video and recordings. One-hundred years ago people didn't hear anything. I have music that I copied by hand because I didn't have a xerox machine. I had to write everything out. But today you can listen to records.

 

Today when you hear an orchestra, and if you haven't heard the announcement, you can't tell which nationality the orchestra is by listening to the flute player. It's pretty hard. Because those flute players sound pretty good, from everywhere, they really do. If you listen to the Chicago Symphony, to Boston, Philadelphia, the London orchestras, or wherever, the flute players sound terrific. They don't have a stamp on them as a characteristic of a country. I defy anybody to tell me what orchestra it is just by listening to the flute player. At one time you could tell a German orchestra, and an English orchestra, but no more. That's how things have developed, which I think is very good.

 

But I'll tell you who inspired me as a student. One of the first ones to inspire me was Joe Mariano. When I first heard him play it was a different concept of flute playing. It was really robust. Which wasn't something that you didn't hear before. Even Kincaid didn't have that. I was so impressed by that.

 

And the next one after that would have to be Maurice Sharp. Because he had the technical facility. He never missed and I often wondered why. I sat next to him for four years and I learned a lot from him about concentration, having pride, and practicing. If you want to play something, you practice until you don't miss it. It's as simple as that, but you've got to practice. There's no short-cut. There's no free lunch (laughs). And you have to be

in the right environment and be with the best players. And when I say best players, you know, I mean big orchestras.

 

P: How did you set goals for yourself?

 

J: Well, by listening to other people I said, "Gee, I'd like to play like that. I wish I could do it like that. ", and I'd practice. For instance, I recorded the Hora Staccato. After I heard Heifetz play it, I said" I have got to play that piece." And I practiced.

 

P: To talk about some technical things now, what did you learn from Kincaid about hand position?

 

J: Yes, he was very strict about that. He explained to me that you hold the right hand like a violin bow. Since I had studied fiddle I understood what he meant, keeping the thumb between the first two fingers, never raising the fingers above the keys, you know. The fingers should never leave the keys. Does that sound strange?

 

P: No, It doesn't sound strange, no.

 

J: The fingers are always on the keys.

 

P: What about when you trill? What about when you do a high D to E trill? Do you open the hand? Do you change the position of the hand?

 

J: It's hard to tell. I'd have to show you. Michelle Debost was watching me play in Munich, and he said,"You know, I notice you keep your fingers very close." And I was always cautioned about that. And I tell my students the same thing. It doesn't mean you have to, it's just that my teacher told me to do it so I do it. And, you know, I didn't want to be yelled at (laughs) He never really yelled.

 

P: What about opening the mouth and breathing?

 

J; Well the trick in breathing is not to be heard, because if you're recording -- I learned that when recording solos. I didn't want the engineer to say, "Hey, I can hear you breathing. II So you learn how to calm down. How to camoulflage your breathing. You can take a breath without anybody noticing. Like somebody said, "Gee, you never take a breath!" I really do,

 

but I do it in such a subtle way. I practiced so you can't tell. You make a diminuendo before you take the breath and start the next note with a softer sound, so it's pretty hard to tell. But a lot of people do that. But you're asking me questions -- nobody ever asked me that before.

 

P: What do you consider your best recordings?

 

J: The Debussy Trio, that I did with Lillian Fuchs and Laura Newell.

 

P: What else.

 

 

J: I did the Beethoven Trio and the Roussel Trio with Joe Fuchs and Lillian ,Fooks and the Roussel Trio with Harriet Fuchs and Lillian Fuchs. Joe Fuchs was the concert master at the Cleveland Orchestra when I first came there. He's the one who encouraged me to play first flute. So I stayed in Cleveland, and when the opportunity came to go to the Pittsburgh Symphony with Fritz Reiner, who was the orchestra conductor when I was at Curtis, I asked Joe Fuchs, "Do you think I should go?" And he said, "Y ou should. You have to go." Then ten years later I bumped into him in New York and we recorded the Beethoven Trio, and then I did the Debussy Trio with Lillian Fuchs. I had studied the Debussy Trio at Curtis with Salzedo. I just love that. I think it's one of the greatest pieces written for flute.

 

P: It really is. What else? What about orchestral recordings? Haydn symphonies with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic?

 

J: Oh, there's so many of them. I'm very proud of the Carnival of the Animals that I did with Andre Kostelanetz.

 

P: What about the Ibert Concerto?

 

J: Well that was a live performance, and I issued that as a recording. I would have liked to have done it over, in those days to do a live recording or broadcast, that has a certain amount of interest.

 

P: I heard that in the tremolo section of the third movement, you used all the real fingerings.

 

J: Why, I shouldn't?

 

 

P: (laughs)

 

 

J: You didn't see in this book here, Kincaid said to me, "Never use fake fingerings. Natural fingers for everything." Isn't that interesting? It develops your technique. Here, you might as well read some of these: "In the C Major scale the low 0 natural must be just as important as the low C. However, do not overemphasize it or accent it. A thing is artistic only when it is subtle." You see, these are things that I wrote down that Kincaid told me. Now you have to understand that I'm only 18 or 19 at this point. But I took down everything. Here: "Balance of tone, playing the major scale. Quantity, intensity of quality, and leave out the wa-wa in tone," as we mentioned before. ""Now to playa tone you don't sink in and out. You're not playing on a line. "

 

Since this is Kincaid's 100th anniversary this year I'm going to enlarge this and try to pass it out at the flute convention in honor of Kincaid. People will be able to get a sense of what he was like.

 

Oh, here, "right hand fingers placed in such a position as to avoid pressing the trill key." You see, he was always concerned about your position. "Thumb of right hand moved a little farther over to the right". You asked me about the position of the fingers, the corrections. He was very thorough about EVERYTHING. He also insisted on playing everything from memory, which is a good idea, because if you practice long enough you'll know it for memory. It's a cute little book isn't it? "Do not play 'dead'" , refering to the vibrato. Also "play fifths, sixths, and sevenths." which I do to this day.

 

P: Oh yes?

 

J: That's what my wife Ruth will tell you.

 

Kincaid used to play at the piano. Here, see? "I thought that it would be alright to breathe after the G#, which is not wrong, but by playing at the piano Mr. Kincaid showed me that it was the resolution of G#, the leading tone, or dominant, and that it would be best to breathe after the G# in the following bar." You notice how he phrased it, "it would be best," but he didn't insist. It was up to me to decide. So you see he was a wonderful teacher, and he had patience. He didn't have that many pupils, there were

only four or five of us then. You see how I had to remember everything and go home and write it down.

 

Some students want to record their lessons. I tell them, "It's not going to do you any good." They ask why and I say, "Because you have to go home and write it out". Then you'll understand what you're writing. But just to be entertained by having a recording play back at you is not enough. I was taught by my own experience of writing this out.

 

P: But one can use recordings and learn a lot.

 

J: Well, yes of course .

 

P: It depends upon the person.

 

J: Yeah.

 

P: What are some of the pieces and etudes you come back to time and time again?

 

J: Bach sonatas. How can you beat Bach sonatas? And I always like to practice the Carnival of the Animals, just to see if I can still play it. Because I always felt that it was a challenge. It's a good piece for detache playing. But you asked me about what's the difference between French flute playing and American flute playing. Well, the best flutist I ever heard was a Frenchman.

 

P: Are you talking about Ferdinand Dufrene?

 

J : Yes, have you heard him play?

 

P:I have some recordings of his.

 

J: He was a hard worker. He played in an orchestra, you know. When he had to playa solo, he couldn't be beat. He had the discipline of playing in orchestra. He came to visit us once and I had invited a group of my flute students over who wanted to meet him. They wanted to hear him play up close. And one of the students came with his own flute and asked Dufrene if he would try it. Dufrene picked up the flute and played the middle E

natural. It was just the most beautiful E natural you could imagine. And he said, "Tres bon." And that's all he would play!

 

Ruth and I went to visit him at the Radio Difusion in Montreal. We went to the concert and that was the last time I saw him. They did the Mendellsohn Spring Symphony. I remember that so well.

 

But he wouldn't teach. He felt he was not qualified to teach. Isn't that interesting? And, you know, in France they don't have private lessons. They have class lessons. What do you think about that?

 

P: Well, I think it depends a great deal on who's running the class. And I think a combination of the two is probably the best.

 

J: When I went to school it was Albert Tipton, Harold Bennet, George Maury, Britten Johnson. We always played together, and we helped each other. It was fun.

 

P: Did you have class together with Kincaid?

 

J: No, but we always played duets, and we had woodwind class and orchestra together.

 

P: That comradeship is important. Just one more question. Do you know about Arnold Jacobs and his work.?

 

J: Let me tell you about Arnold Jacobs. We were at Curtis together, then in the Pittsburgh Symphony together and then in the Chicago Symphony

together. Arnold Jacobs' first cousin, Joe Seeger, was the first horn of the

 

New York Philharmonic. Arnold and I were both ham radio operators, also. So we had many common points between us. Arnold went very deeply into the science of breathing, and I think it's worth while. He's a great tuba player. Are you interested in Arnold Jacobs?

 

P: Oh yes, I've studied his teaching: the breath-builder, the breath bag and the method of separating the instrument from the air to acheive greater suppleness of the air.

 

J: Since you didn't ask me I'll tell you one final thing. I think one of the most important things in practicing is using a metronome. Somehow I feel

 

I'm not alone, and I like the discipline. I always practice with a metronome. I do scales and everything with a metronome. Especially if I don't have a pianist to work with. You know there is a very good video of Heifetz and his way of practicing. It's very good. I guess we can close with one word:

 

PRACTICE!

 

Introduction to Interview Claudi Arimany

 

Claudi Arimany is without doubt the most important solo flutist to come out of Spain. He had established himself as flute soloist for years before he began playing as concert partner to Jean-Pierre Rampal, a relationship which lasted for eleven years until Rampal's passing in 2002. They toured regularly and recorded several times together during this period. Such was the estime that Rampal had for him that he left Claudi his two gold Haynes flutes and a large collection of music.

 

 

Claudi lives outside a small pueblo about forty minutes outside of

Barcelona. His comfortable home is where Rampal stayed whenever he came to Catalonia. They spent much time together there.  On the walls in his home are poster announcements of his concerts in many countries, as well as in his home base, Barcelona, both as soloist and in duo with Rampal. He has collected all the known recordings of Rampal and posseses a large part of his personal library. He posseses a first-hand knowledge about Rampal, both from their contact, first as student and teacher, then as joint performers. As close relationship as there can be between two performing artists and friends existed between the two flutists.

 

 

As a resident of Barcelona, I observed the growth of this relationship, and my interest was to draw from Claudi the stories and experiences about Rampal that he is in the unique position to be able to share. I also wanted American flutists to know who Claudi is in his own right as a flute soloist.

 

 

On several occasions, including the day of the interview, Claudi and I played duets on the two gold Haynes flutes of Rampal, playing repertory that the two of them had played so much together.  We also listened to recordings, both old and new of Rampal and of Claudi and Rampal, commenting on them and sharing observations.

 

 

 

Interview Claudi Arimany - 2004

 

 

P: Tell me who your important teachers were, how you started the flut and how you came into contact with Rampal and the french school of flute playing.

 

 

 

C: Well my first teacher was Salvador Gratacós. He was teaching in Barcelona, not far from where I lived, and I studied privately with him Because my expectation was to be an amateur, I never took an exam o jury. I never even imagined that I could be a professional in the future. I was studying for pleasure. At the same time I was studying economics.

 

But a few years later I saw, and people told me,  that I had a certain facility, and that I should try to become a professional. I loved the instrument and I loved practicing, so I worked very hard.

Salvador Gratacós, though not a top flutist, was a very fine and solid professional.  He created an ambience amongst his pupils in Barcelona of a constant interest for the instrument and it's repertory, and of always trying to improve ourselves. In addition, he often invited Rampal and Marion to come and give us classes, that was my very first contact with the two of them.

 

 

These occasional classes with Rampal were always coupled with his concerts in Catalonia, where he enjoyed so much to play. It was eas for him to come here, he knew there were always alot of  people who loved him, who were waiting for him to come with great expectation, and he simply loved to play. It was because of these invitations form Gratacòs, that I had my first contact with Rampal. I remember the 1st time I played for him, it was a disaster! It took place in an apt in Barcelona.

 

 

Later I went to study in Nice several times, and then in Paris wherestudied with Raymond Guiot and Alain Marion for three years. I continued to see Mr. Rampal during the summer courses in Nice and when I had the oppurtunity. But as I said, I never did follow official studies.

 

 

P: You never worked toward a degree?

 

 

C: Never, I didn't study solfege or harmony, as is customary in our

conservatory system. I began because I liked the instrument, And my affection for the instrument grew because shortly after I had started to play the flute, I heard Rampal at the Palau concert hall in Barcelona. At that time I was interested in jazz, I had even played on a recording.  But when I heard Rampal, I was so shocked at what was possible to do with a pipe like this. I was so shocked and impressed, that I decided in that moment to go into classical music.  That was my beginning in classical music and it was because I was so awed by Rampal.

 

I couldn't imagine that years later I would be the partner of Mr. Rampal, or that I would actually be playing the same flute now that I heard Rampal play that day in the Palau in Barcelona.

 

 

P: The same flute that you heard him play is the instrument you play today?

 

C: Yes.

 

P: Do you remember what he played in the Palau when you first heard him?

 

 

C: Of course, he played a CPE Bach sonata. On the first half of the

concert he played with harpsichord, and on the 2nd half with piano.  He played the CPE Bach sonata and Telemann, and on th 2nd half he played Czerny and Schubert.

 

 

P: I remember hearing Rampal speak on the television when I first arrived here 10 or 12 years ago, he spoke of his special relationship with Catalonia and Spain.

 

C: He used to come and play in Cadaquès for Dalí and other figures of the artistic community there. Yes, he was very involved with Catalonia, he liked our language. In fact he said he was a little bit catalan himself, because he came from Marseille. Our language, catalan, to him resembled the dialect that he

heard as a youth in Marseille. That dialect is probably lost now, spoken only by old people. But he liked to hear catalan very much He liked the country too. Like the catalan people he was mediterranian.

 

He liked to enjoy food, people and friends in a similar way that we do. I think he felt at home here.

 

 

P: So there were a lot of things in common between you and him, both as mediteraneans, as well as the similar way of playing the flute?

 

 

C: Yes, many things.  When I was studying with him I could feel a certain affection or affinity that he had for me (and which I obviously had for him), so the relationship started early on.  Some years later, at a festival in which I had played regularly for quite a number of years, I was asked by the presentor to choose what I would like to play for the next season I said that I would like to play a concert with Mr. Rampal. He accepted and we did the concert with the Prague Chamber Orchestra. It was a great success, not only for the audience but for myself personally and

for Rampal. He said that the experience had been a surprise, a revelation for him to play with me, that he enjoyed it very much. After this experience, he told me he would like to work repertory for two flutes with me because our sounds went very well together.  Several months later I recieved a phone call from his manager asking if I would like to record  a cd together with Rampal. Obviously, I said yes and I was very proud to do it.

 

 

P: Another point you have in common is the fact that you both learned to play the flute in a similar fashion.  Neither of you studied music to go into it as a profession. You studied economics and he studied medicine. I want to ask how Rampal affected you, and how you think you effected Rampal in the years you played together.

 

 

C: Well, I got alot from Rampal, a tremendous amount. I could speak a great deal about that. But I think what Rampal got from me was  stimulation. He was 65 years old when we started to play together. He was starting to think about retiring and I think what I brought to him was a renewed energy to continue, to continue playing concerts and find new repertoire. It sort of re-sparked his fire and desire to play again. For me, the best recordings of his are the last ones. He was excited to play. He told me that many times, and he said that if I had not been there he would have stopped playing.

 

 

P: That goes back to a conversation we had a couple of months ago when you played a video-disc of Rampal playing a recital in Japan 2 years before his death. I noticed that Rampal was playing beautifully. I noticed that because during the 1980's in the US, he was getting a reputation for not sounding so well, particularly on the first half of the concert. One had to wait until the 2nd half to hear the "old" Rampal. That is how many of us heard Rampal many times.

 

So I was surprised to hear him playing with such command and in

complete control on that recording and the other late recordings.  It seems that other people also noticed that he was playing with renewed energy after he started performing with you. In fact, his wife told you that as well. Is that so?

 

 

C: Yes, Françoise told me that several times. You know Rampal was human, he wasn't a machine and he couldn't always be playing at 100% of his capabilities. He accepted many concerts that other artists would not accept, simply because he loved to play. He loved to play everywhere, and he throughout his whole life he wanted to make theflute a popular and important instrument. He accepted concerts everywhere. Sometimes he was tired, it's true, or he had no time to prepare,. But neither did he have any wish to prepare too much for a concert. For him a concert had to have an element of risk and of

improvisation or freshness.

 

 

So you say he wasn't always perfect, It's absolutely normal, especially in those conditions. I remember one time I saw his season schedule: one day he was in Boston, the day after Tokyo, and the day after Detroit.

 

Can you imagine that? He did that because he wanted to help out a harpist who wanted to play with him in Tokyo. He couldn't say no For his friends he accepted to do things that perhaps another artist would never accept. He went to great efforts to help others out. Let's remember that he was a very generous person in his life, in music and on the stage. He was a great partner. Sometimes he wasn't 100% in shape, that was normal.

 

 

P: So you helped to renew him at that point in his life?

 

 

C: I would say a new energy, that is the word. He was happy to play again.

 

 

P: What are the ways that Rampal deeply effected you as flutist an musician?

 

 

C:  Rampal was a very strong man, strong mentally and physically. He was someone who tried to enjoy every second of his life, to give sense and meaning to every moment. He was never bored. He liked many things: cameras, making home movies, etc.. He loved music obviously, and he liked being with friends. He loved his wife enormously whom he always called twice a day. His family was very important, too. He wanted to enjoy everything that life offered him. That is something that you learn by being in contact with someone like him. Even in adverse

conditions he was like that. On one occasion when we were on tour in the US, he was very sick and he did not want to go to the hospital. He said, "If I go to the hospital they won't let me out until tomorrow." He wanted to return to Paris right away but there was an airport strike and he stayed closed up in the hotel room. Even in this condition, in concerts he forgot completely that he was sick.

 

 

He was unable to show unhappiness. He was here to create happiness. When he was playing, you could never say that he was sick. All this is to show you the force and stamina that he had. He lived to give to others to the maximum degree

 

P: What about flute technique and sound? What comments did he make to you over the years? 

 

 

C:  Well, his main idea, main idea was to play naturally. That is easy to say, but not everyone does that, playing or singing. It is such a simple thing and is very difficult! He always focused on making it natural and not on artificially imposing a technical idea about how it should be done

 

Regarding technique: he never talked about the physical aspects of playing;  where to put the tongue, the diaphragm, the lungs, etc. No, he tried to communicate everything through the music

from the inside. He didn't tell you how to use the muscles. He often said that you cannot show someone how to laugh without doing or saying something funny.

 

You cannot teach somebody to laugh saying, well you move the

diaphragm and say "ha-ha-ha".  You will never laugh that way. To laugh you need something funny. That was his way of teaching.

 

 

P: Did Rampal talk about his father?

 

 

C: Alot, alot. He admired his father very much. He spoke often about his father. When he spoke about his father's sound, it seems it was very l iquid and very special, elegant sound. Jean Pierre's father was his model throughout his whole life. He said that every time he took the flute in his hands, he thought of his father.

 

 

P: I recall that my teacher, Thomas Nyfenger, had great admiration for

Joseph Rampal, and he used to play his students a recording of theBoismortier quintets with JP, Marion, Larrieux and another flutist,

 

pointing out Rampal's father's sound on the fifth flute part. Did he talk

about how he started with his father?

 

 

C: Yes, he said they played alot of duets, alot. He never recieved a lesson in his home, only in the Marseille Conservatory.

 

P: He had classes only at the conservatory with his father?

 

C: Yes, but at home never. He would only recieve instructions from the other room like: "this finger up for the d", or "don't cover too much". Lessons always in the conservatory at 7 in the morning, and then after that he went to school.

P: In any case, I think most flutists wouldn't have minded having those corrections from the other room while practicing! So he stu died with his father until what age? Was it until he went to study medicine in Paris?

 

 

C:  Well, he began the flute quite late, he was13 or 14 yrs old. So I suppose he studied with him until he was  17 or 18 years old. I know he was only 22 when he played the Ibert concerto with the radio orchestra.

 

At the time he was in the military service. He was a very fast learner, and he told me that after the 1st year of study he could play anything. Not perfectly, obviously, but he could play just about everything.

 

 

P:  Did he talk about Gascon Crunelle at the Paris Conservatory?

 

 

C: He was in the Paris Conservatory a very short time. I think that when he arrived there, he pretty much knew everything already. Yes, there was Gascon Crunelle,  a very good teacher, obviously, without doubt. But I think he arrived there already well prepared by his father .

 

 

P: What comments did Rampal make about other flutists? Did he have observations about different styles of playing?

 

 

C:  If JP spoke about somebody else, it was always to say something good. Not only about flutists, but also about singers and or other instrumentalists.  Even with a mediocre student in a masterclass, he would always find something good. And if he had to point out something that the student was doing incorrectly, he tried to do it in the most delicate and polite way. He always trying to help and be pòsitive. He spoke often of great flutists of our century. He admired alot of flutists. But as a performing artist he was more reserved. He knew his position, he knew he was on top.

 

 

P: Are there flutists from his past or contemporaries that he felt a

special feeling for or spoke more about?

 

 

C:  Well, he was quite fond of and good friends with Aurele Nicolet and Julius Baker, as well as with Maxence Larrieu and Alain Marion. One thing that I am very proud to tell you is that one time, in an interview on the television, he was asked who the flutists of the new generation were that he prefered. He said three names: Shigenore Kudo, Phillippe Pierlot and myself.

 

 

P: That's a pretty good ranking!

 

 

C: In fact there is a reason, because we are, each of us in our own way of playing, followers of the Rampal school. He said once that the Rampal school has disappeared from the Paris Conservatory.

 

 

P: I also recall an interview in a spanish music magazine several years ago when Rampal said that he considered you to be the person he was passing his way of playing on to.

 

 

You mention Larrieux and Marion. You also play concerts with Larrieux, correct?

 

 

C: Yes we have some concerts in Italy coming up. We play very often together. We are planning a recordingfor 2 fls and pno, witharrangements of Mozart sonatas for 2 pnos-4 hands. It is wonderful music and with flutes it sounds marvelous.

 

 

P: Did Rampal have any comments about american flute playing?

 

 

C: Well, he loved America very much. The first time he went there he was very excited, and continued to be throughout his life. He had hundreds of friends, and very good friends.  He loved the audiences, he found them very generous. He liked playing in the States very much, as did I.

 

 

About the flutists, there are many, many good flutists in the US. The closest to him were perhaps Ransom Wilson or Bob Stallman and Carol Wincenc. Then there is Linda Chesis and Marya Martin. These are the names that come to mind now as friends who were in touch with Rampal.

 

 

I'm sure I'm forgetting some others. They were many very good friends and he was always very proud that the french school was so firmly established in the States. Also, he played a Haynes flute during most of his career.

 

 

He knew that there were very good flutists in America, he helped some of them at certain times and he also played with them.

 

 

P: What were Rampal's comments about contemporary music?

 

 

C: Well, Rampal was not very fond of very, very contemporary music. He needed a tune, something to sing. He did not want to be a slave to the extreme difficulties that contemporary composers would write into the music.

 

 

P: Were there contemporary composers that he admired?

 

 

C: I think the mid 20th century, contemporary french repertory did not especially attract him. He recorded much of it but, apart from the Poulenc Sonata and Debussy Syrinx, he didn't play that repertory very often in concerts. He prefered repertory from the classical period.  He recorded the Dutilleux Sonatine and other pieces, but apart from the Ibert concerto, the Poulenc and Debussy, he performed modern music very little.

 

 

P: And about international composers?

 

 

C: Well the Kachaturian concerto was a favorite of his. And he recorded the Feld flute concerto three times, but unfortunately you cannot find any of them. Feld was a chezch composer and a close friend of his. Rampal called the piece our Brahms concerto, a grand concerto. It's quite difficult, I have worked on it, but it is not very well known. He recorded it three times and it has never  appeared on the market.  One recording was with Sony, but it never came out.

 

 

P: Any other composers that he came in contact with?

 

 

C: In France there are many who wrote for him: the most important name in France is Boulez, but there are many others. For JP and myself Jean-Michel Damase wrote a fantastic trio for 2 fls and pno which we played together in Carnegie Hall with great success. It is a very nice piece.

 

 

Among the american composers, there was the Piston Sonata, as well as the Muzcinski duets and sonata, all of which he recorded, as well as Bernstein, Scott Joplin and others.

 

 

P: Did Rampal come back to certain etudes or methods of practicing throughout his life?

 

 

C: Practicing was not his daily bread, so to speak. But when we travelled together, we played every day, even if there were no concerts. We played in the hotel. That is why I have such a large collection of duets. In every city I would stop to buy duets in a music store. We played about an hour and a half every day. You know when you are travelling, you have large amounts of time in which you have nothing to do. It was a good way to stay in shape.

 

P: Let's talk about recording now. What was Rampal's way of recording?

 

C: He had a very simple but effective  way of recording. Normally he recorded the whole piece once and then another time completely through. He then recorded the sections that were not perfect. That was it. He was very fast when he recorded. He would record a whole cd in a morning. He did this usually with only one or two complete takes. He often improvised the cadenzas to concertos. It was often difficult for the recording engineers because they had to choose.

 

 

P: What concertos and recordings did he improvise the cadenzas too?

 

 

C:  All the italian concertos, the Pla concertos and many others. With the most important repertory, like the  Mozart concertos he played the same cadenzas throughout his whole life.  He  wrote the Mozart cadenzas when he was 25 yrs old.

 

 

But for many of the composers who were not of the first rank, he would improvise the cadenzas.

 

You know, it is quite impressive when you think that Rampal made a great career of playing composers who were of the 2nd and 3rd rank.

 

We don't have Brahms or Beethoven  concertos, or Schumann and Tchaikovsky. He has made a career of playing Devienne and Quantz. It was even more difficult.

 

 

P: Nonetheless, we are talking about fine composers, these individuals of 2nd and 3rd rank. They are delightful pieces, they have great appeal.

 

 

C:  But we don't have the great repertoire. If you look at the career of great violinists or pianists, all of them have made their careers with repertoire of composers of the 1st rank, not with composers that nobody knows about.

 

 

P: Rampal really did make us discover many delightful pieces.

 

 

C: Yes, alot of fantastic music. The last record he was to do, but which was not done, I did. It is called "Mozart and Friends",  and was done with the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra. We recorded it to the memory of Jean Pierre. It has 4 world premiere recordings of previously unknown pieces. There is an 18th century transcription of one of the Mozart violin concertos, and there is Leopold Mozart and Hoffmeister and Vranicky. They are fantastic concertos. Leopold Mozart wrote 5 concertos for the flute, and 4 of them are still lost. Rampal found this concerto in Zagreb, I think. He was always looking for new repertoire until the end of his life.

 

Unfortunately, he could not record these pieces, butI was very fortunate to able to to it. I did it with his materials. It is a very nice recording. The cadenzas in the Mozart violin concerto are by Jean-Pierre.

 

 

P: Talk more about recording with Rampal.

 

 

C: He liked recording very much. We had many good times recording together because he liked to take risks when he recorded, even more than in concerts. He felt that if it wasn't good, we would do it again.

 

 

P: Many people would look at it in the opposite way because they think that the recording has to be perfect. They don't want to tire

themselves out by taking chances or risks on the takes.

 

 

C: Rampal didn't look at it that way. I think he was quite used to taking risks in concerts as well as in recordings. He felt that if it didn't go well, he would do it again. That is the difference for mean orchestral player. The soloist must take risks whereas the orchestral player must be sure and play with the rest of the section and the orchestra.

 

 

You know he listened to his recordings only once, if at all. When I went to Paris, I stayed in his house where they had a room for me. I enjoyed listening to his old records. He didn't even know what recordings he had. There were records, quite a few years old, that were unopened. I was amazed!

 

 

Even with the new recordings that we did together, he got very excited the day that it arrived. He would call a family member to come and listen, we would listen to it once, he would say he liked it very much, but he would never listen to it again.

 

 

His main judge in recordings and concerts was his wife. She should be on all the juries of international competitions because she is a fantastic judge of flute playing. JP gave great importance to her opinion. Even in concerts when Françoise was there, I saw him look at her often and watch for her signals; to make it louder or more calm or something like that. He looked totowards her often. He was very lucky with his wife.

 

You know he was somebody who, when he made a decision in his life, he would not change it for the rest of his life.  He had the same pianist for years and years, Veyron-Lacroix and then John Steele-Ritter. His marriage to his wife was for his whole life. With his flute, it was the same Haynes form the moment he first played it to the end of his life. His friends were also life-long friends, and he kept the same manager that he first signed with. He was unable to change. Nowadays that doesn't happen, people change and look for better. One time he said, to have a good flute is like marrying somebody.  You have to give it a chance.

 

There are good moments and not so good moments, but it is your flute, like your wife. It's forever.

 

 

Even when he wrote in the score, he did it in pen, not in pencil. He didn't think of writing in pencil and then changing it. He had another idea of things, he was very lucky in his life decisions.

 

 

P: In your own playing, now that time has gone by since he passed away. How do you think of Rampal when you play the flute in concerts? What do you feel about him now?

 

 

C:  He is always present for me. At the moment that I put the flute together, I think of him. I am playing his flute! Also when I get dressed for a concert I think of him. He is present in my life in many ways, not only in music. Often I think of what JP would recommend that I do for a certain situation. We had a lot of time to talk on tour and we did speak a great deal. In addition, he had his own room here in my home. He spent a great deal of time here. He liked staying here in the country, with the pleasant landscape and the food. We had alot of very relaxed time here

together.

 

Also, when we were on tour around the world in Japan, Israel, and the US, he always liked to talk alot. We had fantastic conversations. At the beginning my french was not so good, but it got better! Often, after talking a bit, he would say "let's play some duets". One time in Lebanon, in Balbeck were we played a concert at the festival there, we were walking around the ruins as tourists one day. It was so nice to be there that he said, "why don't we play Mozart?". We had the flutes because we

were coming from a rehearsal, so we took them out and started playing. The people there stopped to listen to us!

 

 

P:  What about in the  moments before a concert, you observed him so many times arriving at the hall,  taking the flute out, etc. Are there ways that he affected you?

 

 

C: We didn't prepare. He was very natural. I don't get nervous for a concert, he didn't either. We spoke about anything but music, but it was very relaxed.

 

 

Every time we went to the states we felt a kind of excitement. Healways recieved such a an ovation even before the concert. Thatsurprised him, he said "if it's like that before the concert, what will it be like afterward if we play well?" People  loved him very much, you could feel that there. He had a very good relationship with the public.

 

P: As one of the most recording artists of 18th century repertoire, did Rampal ever comment on the growing original instrument and performance practice movement?

 

 

C: He was a bit surprised at the success of original instruments.  For my birthday one time he gave me a present: the published letters of Mozart.

 

It is very interesting to read them. You understand from them that

Mozart was always looking for a new piano, an improved instrument. If there was a new piano, Mozart would buy it, or he would go to see it.

 

Why? Because it was time to find an instrument not so bad as the one he had. If they were always trying to find a better instrument and were not happy with their instruments, what is the sense of our going back and playing them again? Why would we want to play out of tune again?

 

The instruments have improved because poeple were not happy with their instruments. I'm telling you, of course, what JP said. He was a little bit surprised by the success of the movment.

 

 

P: There is an important point in regards to that. One thing that has made an impression on me at times is the sacrosanct attitude of some in the early music movement, as if they have the only way to play this music. Whereas if we think of Rampal as the descendent of a line of great playing that goes all the way back to Buffardin, it becomes clear that he was clearly connected in a very direct way to the great traditions.

 

 

C: He didn't consider it necessary to go back to the old instruments. Sometimes people ask the question why Mozart didn't like the flute. Well, obviously, he didn't like the flute. It was the baroque flute!

 

 

P: Nonetheless, there are very fine people playing now.

 

 

C: Yes but I feel generally that they play with to many rules. I often feel that something is missing. It is not because you play with a certain instrument that you are closer to the composer.  The music is done by musicians and not by instruments. It is not because you play the old instrument that you are nearer to the old composer. The instrument is only the medium, it is not the goal in itself.

 

 

Rampal's favorite music was the rococco music; Bender, Quantz, CPE Bach and the other sons of J.S. Bach. He also liked the German and Czech Sturm und Drang periods, but he said it was music that was too intelligent for the normal public, that it was too specialized. He felt that it is very difficult to play and listen to for the normal public.

 

 

One of the best recordings of JP for me are the CPE Bach concertos. Unfortunately they are very hard to find today.

 

P: They are favoritesfor me too. What were his observations about other musicians? 

 

 

C: He didn't like musicians who looked for all the small, small details in the music constantly. He thought that matters often arrived at the point that things were being said for nothing.

 

 

P: What did he say about his own sound?

 

 

C: He preferred his sound of the last ten years of his life more than any other period of his life. He liked it even better than when he was young. I feel that way too. There is a recording here of the Debussy Sonata, not distributed, that he recorded one year before he died, it is just brilliant.

 

 

P: Did he ever say why?

 

 

C: I don't know, I think it was a question of more depth in the sound. It wasn't so brilliant and you would forget the flute and simply focus on the music. When he was young one listened to the fantastic flute playing and it was exciting, but it was different than when he was older.

 

 

P: It is remarkable that just with a pipe, as you say, there is such a great variety of sound that can be achieved.

 

 

C: Yes, it's quite true. Also, Rampal was a very shy person, something people didn't know that about him. They didn't imagine him that way. He didn't like to try other flutes ever. It didn't interest him at all. Neither did the improvements on the flute have any attraction for him.

 

 

P: He played the same Haynes for so many years. Did he ever talk about Powell flutes? Did he ever play an old Powell?

 

 

C: Never, that I know of. He played his Louis Lot until 1958, when he got this Haynes. He had two Haynes, one engraved for pictures and as a 2nd instrument, and the other for concerts. I have them both.

 

He wasn't interested in reviews but he was always happy to read a good review of his colleagues. That occurred with me one time, there was a review in the Boston globe that was not to favorable towards him but was quite positive for me. He called me at 7am in the morning, read it to me and told me to keep the review, that it would be helpful to me.

 

 

P: Speak to me more about the Rampal School.

 

 

C: He felt that the Rampal School at the Paris Conservatory was finishe with the new teachers. He said that Shigenore Kudo, Phillippe Pierlot and myself are the people that represent the continuation of his way of playing.

 

 

You know, his flutes are not easy to play, alot of people don't like to play them. You have to be very strong to play them. For me at the beginning it was very hard to play his flutes. People thought that his flute was very special, very different than the others, that's why it sounded the way it did. No, it was a normal flute, a little bit more resistant that's all.

 

 

In my opinion only Haynes has conserved the traditional way of building flutes, the others are making flutes easier to play. This is good and not so good at the same time. It's easier because there is less resistance, but it is harder to bring your own personality out without that resistance.

 

 

Rampal wasn't interested in the other flute makers. He said that if he couldn't play Haynes, he would play Yamaha perhaps.

 

P: One thing that fascinates me is the phenomenon of how you came to play with Rampal. Coming from this small country and culture, whereas in America and France, for example, there are thousands of flutists who would have loved to be in the postion of playing regularly with him.

 

 

C: One difference with these big economically powerful countries like Japan of the US, is that people, in order to establish a career have to follow a certain path of competitions and auditions, etc. They are obliged to follow the same path. I have never done  a competition. There are other ways to do it. And in the places where so many people have already taken the same way, it is very difficult to create your career. But you must take your own way and not follow the others. That is part of the reason, I believe, that I was able to do it. At the same time, there so many oppurtunities and possibilities in the states.

 

 

For example, there is a book by Sheryl Cohen, I think everyone should read this book. It is called "Bel Canto Flute" and reading this book I can hear JP speaking. It's a wonderful book. She understood perfectly everything Rampal did.

 

 

P: The professional conditions in the US are quite challenging. I

remember going to orchestral audtions in the US where there were 300 flutists who had come to play.

 

 

C: Yes, and everyone tries to play in the same way. That is part of the problem to me.

 

 

P: What is your advice to a young flutist who wishes to pursue a solo career.

 

 

C: It is very difficult to say now. The musical life of the flute is so

crowded now.  First of all: you must be honest with yourself, you must make your own way, as I said, and be very patient and believe in yourself. Work hard and practice scales and arpeggios. I still practice Taffanel-Gaubert when I am able. It is difficult to give advice now.

 

 

P: Who are your favorite composers?

 

 

C: Well, my favorite composer is Mozart, as he is with almost everybody. JP was also a Mozartean. One of the things I am most proud of is my recording of the Mozart concertos with the Hungarian Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra that Rampal conducted. That was a great moment for me. JP was proud of that too. It was done a an american label in LA.

 

One thing that interests me is learning about the context in which the great composers lived. Not only to know about the great composers but to understand what was happening around them. The 1st record I did was virtuoso flute music of Bach's pupils: Kirnberger, Abel, Mütel. Composers nobody knows of, but fantastic music! You would say it's Bach.

 

 

Another cd I did is called "The flute in Paris during Mozart's time",

Samitz, Pleyel (the C major flute concerto, which is a wonderful piece) and the Mozart fl & hp. concerto. The most recent cd, that I already spoke of, is "Mozart and Friends" with the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra with 4 world premiere recordings.

 

 

To know what was happening around the great composers is very

interesting to me, it helps me to know them better. Mozart was not a flower in the desert.  He was the main flower in a very fertile garden, amongst other beautiful flowers. It is important to understand how life was then, and what the context was for the great composers.

 

 

That is the case with the 14 Devienne concertos which I have recorded, the world premiere recording of them all together.  They are not all great pieces but it is very informing to now them all.  I believe I have inherited the interest for new repertoire from JP, the new repertoire of the old composers! I have also recorded the Mozart concertos two times, the 2nd time with JP conducting.

 

 

The very last recording we did together was a cd that had a trio for 2 fls and vc by Hoffmeister. But the other repertoire are three piano sonates of Mozart for fl and stg trio arranged by Hoffmeister. We call them the new flute quartets of Mozart! It is fantastic music. There is so much music from the 18th century, and we have recovered only about 1% percent of it!

 

Another example is the Vranicky concerto on the recent cd.  There is percussion in the orchestra! That's unusual.