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William Bennett in conversation with Edward Blakeman
William Bennett was born in London. His
parents were both artists (his father worked as an architect) and he had
early ambitions to follow in their footsteps. At the age of 12, however,
he began to play the flute and went on to become a pupil of Geoffrey Gilbert
at the Guildhall School of Music. In 1958 he won a French Government Scholarship
to Paris, where he studied with Fernard Caratge and Jean-Pierre Rampal,
and at the end of his time there won a medal at the International Music
Competition in Geneva. During the 1960's he also studied with Marcel Moyse.
He began his orchestral career as a member of
the BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra. He later joined Sadlers Wells Orchestra
and was then principal flute for some years in the London Symphony Orchestra.
He now plays with the English Chamber Orchestra and the Academy of St
Martin-in-the-Fields, and devotes much of his time to his solo career
and to chamber music. He has played in the Prometheus and Vesuvius Ensembles,
been a frequent guest artist in the Melos Ensemble and is now a member
of the newly formed Dartington Ensemble. He also had duo partnerships
with Clifford Benson (piano), George Malcolm (harpsichord), and Osian
Ellis (harp).
William Bennett has made numerous recordings and
given master-classes in many countries. Since 1983 he has been Professor
of Flute at the Hochschule in Frieburg im Breisgau. His many experiments
in improving flute design have resulted in instruments now being produced
with the William "Bennett Scale" by various makers in the USA,
Great Britain and Taiwan.
William Bennett is one of life's enthusiasts and
an altogether larger-than-life character! (If you look him up in the International
Who's Who you will find his hobbies listed as "winemaking and cockroach-baiting"!)
I spent a very entertaining morning with him in the "flute workshop"
at the top of his house, listening to old records, looking at instruments
and talking about flute playing. He had just finished recording the Bach
B minor Suite ('again!') and the Mozart Flute and Harp Concerto. There
were various concerts coming up as well as one of his regular trips to
teach in Germany. So, with such a busy life, how does he keep his playing
in peak condition?
E.B. Do you do a lot of practice?
W.B. Yes, but it might surprise you what I do. I usually
practice tone and articulation, but very little nowadays of what people
mistakenly call 'technique'.
E.B. Can you explain what you mean?
W.B. Well, people think technique is playing a lot of notes
fast. That's ridiculously easy on the flute, it has the simplest fingering
of any instrument. Having done my scales with Geoffrey Gilbert, I don't
have much trouble with that sort of thing. (If my fingers have gone all
weak and sloppy I sit down at the piano and play my Dohnanyi finger exercises!)
The things which are difficult are tone production and articulation.
E.B. Do you have particular exercises for these?
W.B. The triplet exercise from the Sonority Book by Moyse
is the most useful for flexibility. I also do a variation of the chromatic
exercise, starting on the note B, at the beginning of the book. I usually
begin with the harmonic series - finger low E, then produce the octave
and the twelfth - and on that note try to get my sonority, a vocal sonority,
with the minimum effort of the lips. Then I spread the tone from that
third harmonic back to the second and finally to the low note. Then I
try to match the notes around the middle B in the same way. My technical
thought on this is that we need to control the direction of the air the
amount of the mouth hole covered, and the speed, width and depth of the
air stream. Articulation is how you inflect the column of air and doesn't
necessarily have anything to do with the tongue, although most of the
time we use our tongue to do it. You can't get the articulation until
you've got the tone right. Articulation is utterly dependent on the tone
being properly focused and focus means getting the harmonic in tune.
E.B. How much do you think the actual instrument is an important
factor in playing?
W.B. Very little. A good instrument is always a fantastic
help, if it is the one which will give you what you are looking for. If
you have a burning desire to make such-and-such a sound, you might find
an instrument that gives you that quality, but the more important factor
is having the sound in your head. A good instrument is one which removes
obstacles from getting what you want. I think flutes have been greatly
improved in the last 20 years, particularly the headjoints.
E.B. Is the headjoint the most important part of the flute?
W.B. No, it's a fairly balanced thing between the headjoint
and the body. There are some bodies which are decidedly stuffy, pulled
in at the joints, and resistant. I think the body and the head are equally
important and they also have to have some son of balance, which I don't
fully understand, but I just know this balance exists.
E.B. Do you mainly play on one headjoint, though, and swap
it around different flutes?
W.B. I've got a large number of headjoints, but there's
only one which I've played on very much in the last few years. That's
a Bonneville: not silver, but silver-plated German silver, with a lip-plate
that I made. I'm constantly trying other headjoints in rehearsals because
I can see that my Bonneville has a limited life, the metal has worn very
thin in pans.
E.B. You referred a moment ago to producing 'my sonority'.
I've always been struck by the particular qualities of tone in your playing.
Can you explain what you are aiming at and how you achieve it?
W.B. How can one put that into words? No two people have
the same experience, or even hear the same thing, and their experience
of playing the flute is going to be what they've heard... I could start
by talking about the things that have influenced me. The first was as
a boy, noticing that the flute sounded much better than the recorder,
rounder and fuller. Then when I was 12 I won some money at the village
fete (for some of my drawings, I think) and I bought a record of the Busch
Chamber Orchestra playing the 2nd Brandenburg Concerto. So I got my first
record of Moyse. Shortly after this my godfather gave me some records
including the one of the D major Mozart with Moyse. (Eventually I was
to find out that for me, Moyse was the favourite. This really was it!).
Then, at 16, I started having lessons with Geoffrey Gilbert and every
time I heard him playing on the radio I thought, "Oh, that's wonderful.
If I could only play half as well as that, I'd be happy". Geoffrey
was the best teacher in the world as far as I was concerned, and I still
think he is. In fact I am constantly remembering and being thankful for
having had the luck to have learnt with him.
E.B. Were there other flautists who influenced you early
on?
W.B. I got a record of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, with
Georges Laurent, which was wonderful. That was a luminous sound of a very
special sort. Then in 1955 when I was in the Army we went to the States
on tour and Geoffrey said. 'Oh, you should look out for Joseph Mariano'.
In Washington I met a pupil of Mariano's and he sold me a 'Mariano-model'
headjoint, a Powell. I just couldn't believe the tremendous ease and power
of getting all the notes out of it. Then we went to Rochester and we had
a free day and I went to hear Joseph Mariano teaching. It was fantastic.
He made the biggest sound I'd ever heard, and lots of different colours.
It wasn't a big forced sound. I decided I was going to try pulling out
the flute like he did. It meant that I had to approach 'pianissimo' in
a completely different way, I had to open the hole much more and play
much looser. I promised myself to play on the Mariano headjoint for three
months - opened out and blowing much sharper than before - and I don't
think I've ever gone back again to the place I started from, so Mariano
was a very big influence. He and Richard Adeney were the first people
I noticed using different colours on the flute.
E.B. Do you think your interest in drawing and painting
made you more aware of trying to find colours in sound?
W.B. I don't quite know, but I do remember on this same
tour of America with the band, we went through the Eastern States in the
Fall and I hung out of the window of the Greyhound-type coach looking
at the colours. I was associating the colours I saw, these fantastic golds
and yellows and browns and reds - impossibly beautiful colours - with
something I was imagining I had heard in Kincaid's sound in the film Faniaisia,
which I remembered seeing when I was about 12. Except that when I went
to see Fantaisia again when I was 21 in Paris, I was expecting to hear
the same sound and I didn't like it any more! What had happened was that
I had taken a memory of a sound and it had developed with me and then
when I heard it again it was a frightful disappointment.
E.B. You mentioned Richard Adeney as an influence.
W.B. Yes, Geoffrey Gilbert and Richard Adeney were
the players I was fascinated by. Richard, because he had colours that
nobody else made on the flute. Oliver Bannister is another player who
influenced me tremendously. There's a wonderful sound and a wonderful
use of it. Albert Honey also made a lovely singing sound in the. Radio
Orchestra and he talked me into going to study with Caratage in Paris.
When I was there I heard Fernand Dufrene and it was absolutely startling
to me that the flute could be so beautiful and so big and so varied. He
was apparently always in tune, and had the same ability as Oliver Bannister
to combine his sound when playing in octaves with another instrument so
that a completely new sound came from the combination. His playing was
always noble and dignified, and I once heard him play a whole phrase of
a solo in Petrouchka with absolutely no vibrato - it was spine-chillingly
wonderful. Dufrene has inspired me to try to make those sorts of sounds
on the flute, and probably the reason why I'm still playing a Louis Lot
In preference to anything else is because Dufrene always got those magic
sounds on a Louis Lot. I also had four lessons from Rampal while I was
in Paris. I went not being a great admirer of his and I came away quite
a fan! Rampal was very good for me in his attitude to making music - shaping
scales, and taking risks, and generally enjoying it.
E.B. How did your lessons later on with Marcel Moyse help
you to develop your playing further?
W.B. When I went to Moyse, which was in 1965 I think, he
was always talking about singers and what they did with the sound - the
'inflections'. Moyse showed me much about how to listen and I started
more consciously imitating singers. I remember being in the Festival Hall
one day when April Camelo was singing. This was the breakthrough for me.
She sang a phrase which was so fantastic with a wonderful sound, and I
remember thinking, 'I wish I could make that sound'. I picked up my flute
for my phrase that followed, and it came. I felt it in my throat, a little
triangle - an equilateral triangle about an inch on each side - and that's
where the sound came from. It wasn't outside, in front of the lips, or
somewhere down the tube of the flute, it was in my throat. For the rest
of the concert every time I played I could feel the sound being produced
there. I didn't have to think any more about what to do. I realised this
was what Moyse had meant by saying, 'Don't think about the lips, they
think for themselves!' I went back that night and started practising 'vocalises'.
I played them and I sang and I tried to get the feeling the same. I'm
still teaching this. I found I could get the sound in my body and this
little triangle in my throat extended itself downwards until it went right
to the bottom of the ribs, across where the diaphragm is.
E.B. The idea of a triangle seems rather strange.
W.B. It was the sensation as it appeared to me. An inspiration
or a vision is what you perceive. If it's an angel, it's an angel, not
a frog! I got a triangle.
E.B. Your playing style has always impressed me as being
very vocal. Are there other singers who inspired you?
W.B. My greatest admiration amongst the singers is for Janet
Baker. Just after I got back from Paris I played in a student production
of Gluck's Orfeo and there was a girl singing who was just wonderful,
and that was Janet. I became a fan others from that moment. The first
thing you notice is something of the quality and depth of her sound, but
in fact it's the inflection which is so wonderful and this is that I learned
with Moyse. He was talking not about the sound, he had no fixed idea about
that, and was very generous to people with completely different concepts
of sound. It was what you did with it that mattered.
E.B. Were there other opportunities to work with Janet Baker?
W.B. I remember once in a recording session: King's College,
Cambridge, being right in front of her engulfed by this wonderful sound.
I noticed I could perceive the note she was singing an instant before
you could actually hear it. On the flute you can think the quality of
sound you want - you hear it just before you play it -and the body takes
over and does it for you. Rather like Moyse saying, 'Don't think of the
lips, they think for themselves!' Which I have realised is also true of
the diaphragm.
E.B. Did you ever have a chance to discuss any of this with
Janet Baker?
W.B. I met her once on a train going down to Bath and we
had lunch together. I had found out about pitching notes - you pitch the
higher notes higher up in your body and I was doing the same on the flute
- and she said she had a way of deepening the high notes by reaching them
right from the bottom of her breathing apparatus at the back. Then she
said, 'Another thing I do when I sing is try to bounce the sound off the
soft palate'. And I said, 'What's that?', and she said, 'Oh that's the
bit at the back of your throat that feels cold when you breathe in'. She
taught me how to breathe! If you take in a breath that strikes the air
cold on your throat, the apparatus of your stomach works without thinking
about it. 'Don't think about the diaphragm, it thinks for itself!'. Taste
the air as it goes in and cools the throat, without making any noise,
and you have breathed well. People have terrible trouble with breathing
because they think about the stomach. People also have terrible trouble
because they hold themselves so badly, of which I'm also guilty, but at
least I'm fighting it!
E.B. Do you get nervous before you play?
W.B. I used to get very nervous because I was desperately
trying to prove that I was good, and I was also fighting a flute which
didn't work. Since I've been to Moyse I get less nervous. He showed so
much about looking for what one was doing in the phrase, that one's mind
gets taken up with how to produce the phrase rather than worry about oneself.
E.B. Is that the only way to overcome nervousness, by the
power of your concentration on what you are doing?
W.B. I don't think it's the only way; you see being nervous
is an obstacle. If you've got an obstacle, you can walk round it, jump
over it, or remove it. There are all sorts of approaches to this. Years
ago I used to get very nervous and then I realised that I would be drinking
two or three black coffees before a performance to make sure I had properly
woken up. It didn't always work. Sometimes I'd get dry in the mouth and
then I found out from somewhere that coffee stimulates the adrenaline
too much and beyond a certain point you get that drying up syndrome. So
when I had something important to play I went to the other extreme: no
black coffee at all! That was one way of combating that sort of nerves.
But nerves tend to come on you in a different guise each time. I had 'the
shakes' once, when I did my French Government Scholarship, which was the
most important audition I've ever done. I had to prove that I was good
and I just couldn't sleep at all the night before. I went up and I just
shook (I don't know why they gave me the scholarship!). I don't know what
one does about the shakes, except find out how to hold oneself well so
that it doesn't get too much in the way. It can be some other form of
nervousness the next time, you don't know what it's going to be. So really
Moyse's way is the best one: immerse yourself in the music so much that
you haven't got time to think about yourself, because it's worrying about
being good enough that makes you nervous.
E.B. Do you play from memory at all?
W.B. Quite often. Sometimes I play the Mozart D major from
memory.
E.B. Do you think it's a good thing?
W.B. I started it as a conscious effort. I used to play
everything from memory as a schoolboy, it was completely easy. Then I
stopped, I don't know why, I never bothered about it. But when I went
to Moyse I was fascinated with the memory of this man, and I asked him
about memory and he said. 'You cannot study my memory, it is memory by
love'. He would take up a conversation that he had left off two or three
years before with somebody. Once in Boswil I played the Schubert Variations
and he said to me, 'Oh yes, we discussed this theme in Saint Amour three
years ago'. He seemed to remember everything with a special clarity and
it appeared to have something to do with his perception. So I determined
that I would play one or two things from memory and I found that in working
at something in order to memorize it one did learn it much better.
E.B. Does it then help to liberate the performance?
W.B. This is of course discussable. It's interesting that
Moyse apparently never played without the music. I did a tour playing
the Mozart D major with the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields and I made
myself do it from memory. The first performance I had the music there,
but very low, and I didn't look at it. After that I decided I could do
it. Ever since then I've played it from memory and I do find that provided
one is sure enough of one's memorization (of course slips do occur) it
forces a greater element of communication. It improves your understanding
of the music. The process of making sure of the memorization makes you
aware of the 'question and answer' clement in the phrasing - orchestra
to you, or your own phrase to your next phrase, the rise and fall. After
all, you are face to face with your audience, and it makes you somehow
more persuasive in putting it over. It forces eloquence upon you!
E.B. What general advice would you give to young players?
W.B. Do a lot of listening, but not only to flutes. When
I was 15 at school I made a guitar and so I very quickly got to know about
Julian Bream. That man makes so many colours on the instrument and I wanted
to play like that on the flute. That was a very important influence on
me because I found out how to shift your hand up and down on the strings
and change the sound by the different parts of the finger you use and
I began experimenting with how to achieve these changes on the flute.
I also have a great collection of records of Adolf Busch and Kreisler
and I've realised in recent years how much my listening to those two people
has influenced me. I can remember wondering how Kreisler got those wonderful
double stops with both parts sounding equally good and singing fantastically.
Then there is some way he was with the articulation - articulating but
not stopping - I don't understand it, but I want to do it!
E.B. You've made many records yourself. Of the ones currently
available, which are the most representative of your playing, do you think?
W.B. Well, all I can really say is I'm pleased with some
of them! The one I actually tend to think back to, although not strictly
typical, is the Handel Sonatas, on Philips, where I used my conical Boehm
flute. I liked what came out. I was very surprised when I heard it - a
wooden conical Boehm, made by Rudall and Rose in about 1845, held together
with elastic bands!
E.B. I remember first hearing that record and wondering
about the sound of the flute. It didn't occur to me that you were using
a totally different instrument.
W.B. It has a smaller volume, but in a way it's much more
responsive to what you do - particularly in the articulation - than a
cylinder Boehm flute. The conical bore has some advantages and there's
a more human sound to it. Of course you can't use it in a big orchestra.
E.B. What about your plans for the future? Many instrumentalists
nowadays seem to be turning their attention towards conducting.
W.B. I took some conducting lessons when
I was at the Guildhall and they were very good for me because they showed
me how to use breathing in order to give an 'up beat' and that's helped
me tremendously in chamber music. But I don't have any ambition to conduct;
it doesn't concern me, I don't need that power, somehow, I'm still looking
for something else.
E.B. So you find there's enough to think about with just
the flute?
W.B. Well I've got an awful lot I can't do! I'm still trying
to solve some of the problems, still trying to make it sound alive. It's
what I want to do and it seems to have a lot of challenges...
© Edward Blakeman
Rampal and Dufrene
This Quarter brings the sad news of the deaths
of two great flute players who have had an enormous influence on me personally.
Firstly in may we heard the news of the death
of Jean-Pierre Rampal,
aged 78 who had created a huge international career, and made more recordings
than anyone in the world on any instrument. He unearthed a huge quantity
of Baroque music, and published countless editions of all sorts of pieces.
He had a special flair for writing tasteful and elegant cadenzas
and sometimes he conducted (& quite well at that!).
He was tall and amply proportioned, but moved
graciously and easily, giving the impression that his feet were not so
much supporting him as much as tethering the large balloon of his body
down to earth. He would often raise himself onto his toes and lift up
the flute for a special high note. His head, which appeared as quite small
on his large body, was very freely perched on top of his spine, bobbing
about and nodding, carrying his amused smile and sparkling brown eyes.
He was the first Man with the Golden flute
- the first really big international superstar but his repute
came more from his musical sparkle and the happy personality which radiated
to the audience than from the yellow tube he carried so elegantly. He
also had a wonderful facility, which he could sustain without much practise
and a wonderful way of taking quick breaths without interrupting
the flow of the music.
I was lucky enough to get a few lessons with him
whilst a student in Paris and was instantly delighted with him
his humour, and his generosity especially for his sharing
my enthusiasm for other great players such as Moyse, Dufrene & Crunelle,
and also for refusing to accept payment for the lessons! On My first visit
he asked what I wanted to find out from him and I told him that
I wanted to find his detache in the low register, - at which he laughed
( as if everyone else wanted that too) and then went on to show me how
to use the Taffanel scales to work towards this. He then went on to show
me much more than I had imagined about how to shape the scales into music,
trying to seduce the ear of the imaginary impresario who was on the other
side of the door, and how practise the scales for working at the quick
breath. He was very concerned in a piece about the rise and fall of a
phrase, sometimes leading towards the actual top note more than to the
first of the bar at the summit, and sometimes concerned about the rise
and fall of a semitone. He was unscrupulous about changing the articulation
if he thought it would improve the music, apparently guided more by instinct
than reason. Many teachers say that one should practice until everything
is 200% certain, but Rampal was a risker who said Dont go
mad practising all those high Ds in the first movement of the Prokofiev,
many players get in a bad state if they miss one, but I sometimes miss
them all and still I get success with the piece because I practised the
musical bits and he said Why bother practising long
B-flat's? Somebody put the thumb B-flat and the side lever to make
life easier!
He once told me that he was on tour in the USA
and he lost his Gold Haynes flute in an airport, only discovering its
absence on reaching his final destination, but still he relaxed and enjoyed
a good meal and a film that evening, and the flute turned up the next
day and he didnt lose any sleep over it!
Once I played an afternoon recital for the New
York Flute Club, and walked onto the platform to see Jean-Pierre in the
audience, his head rocking gently backwards and forwards and wearing that
slightly amused smile. His presence was in no way intimidating, Just supportive
in the nicest possible way and of course afterwards we went out
and had a large quantity of smoke salmon & scotch, and played duets
and trios all evening, notwithstanding that he was playing the Khachiaturian
Concerto the next day in Carnegie hall. During the course of that evening
he told me that he was actually laughing at the beginning of my recital
because he had come to play the Khachiaturian Violin concerto, which he
had just rehearsed, and had popped over the road and found me playing
a recital of Violin, Oboe and saxophone pieces and between us we were
playing no flute repertoire at all. He then outlined his philosophy of
why it was always alright to borrow music from another instrument
saying that if you tell a living composer that you like his music, he
is happy with your enthusiasm, and will say, as did Khachiaturian You
should play it then! This rule will surely apply to a dead composer,
although it is slightly more difficult to get the response required. Ever
since then I have taken if as a sort of Carte Blanche to purloin anything
I fancy.
The Cadenzas he wrote for classical concertos
show his excellence as a musician. He had the imagination and good taste
to create elegance and beauty in an appropriate style that could still
enhance the music of Mozart, Gluck of CPE Bach, without ever conjuring
up the evil dinosaur which would lead you through a purgatory of a thousand
modulations and false dashes to a final thrill to dump you back in a piece
that you had forgotten about anyway.
Once as he was driving me around the Boulevard
Peripherique in Paris; some other driver cut in front of us with an awful
piece of driving which almost involved us in a crash and where some one
else would have been indignant or angry, Jean-Pierre merely laughed and
said He wont live very long!
He was a Bon Viveur determined to
enjoy the good things in life, and like many Frenchmen was passionately
interested in food. Once in Japan we went to a Sushi restaurant, and he
amazed me that he knew the Japanese names of all the dishes, and all of
which, except Ika (Squid) he loved. His Autobiography Musique, mon
Amour sums up his enthusiasm for living, which he did with great
energy.
Well done Jean-Pierre, and thank you for sharing
so much happiness!
The other great player was Fernand Dufrene,
who died in June aged 89. I first heard him in the flesh in the Edinburgh
Festival, playing in the Orchestre Nartionale de la RTF. I was in the
army playing for the Tattoo, and we were allowed into the Usher hall for
the rehearsals, so I got to hear several exposures of the Philharmonia,
the Danish state Radio Orchestra, the Nord West Deutscher Rundfunk Orchestra
and the French LOrchestra nationale de la RTF. This was all very
highflying stuff, but it was the sound of Dufrene that captured my imagination,
it had a great depth and changeability.
A few years later I went to Paris where I went
religiously every week to hear the National Orchestra Just to hear the
Flute. I felt as though I was drinking from the fountain of truth just
to hear this wonderful deep sound of many colours that was so wonderfully
in tune this might not sound so special nowadays, but it must be
understood that there was not much to get in tune with, but whenever the
flute had a melody in octaves with another instrument there was a blend
of sounds, and the net result always sounded in tune, despite
the fact that the other instrument by itself would frequently be far from
perfect. This ability to create a new instrument when playing in octaves
was shared by Oliver Bannister of the Halle Orchestra. I have often wondered
if either or both of them employed some special way of Coupling
their sounds to that of the other instruments by employing a sound with
less harmonics than normal and using a very relaxed lip than would normally
be necessary for projection in a soloistic way? I shall almost
certainly never find out now!
I heard quite a large amount of Music in the
four months I was there, including a Daphnis & Chloe and
a LApres midi and a Stokowski concert with Bach organ
works transcribed for Orchestra. I was very impressed with the Stokowski
set-up with the strings on the left, wind and Brass on the right and cellos
and Basses in the centre facing forwards. This seemed to give a greater
depth and warmth to the sound, and better separation of the different
sections. Stokowski had all the woodwind parts doubled up, but I dont
think Rene Rateau, who was doubling Dufrenes part, played a note
all evening, it simply wasnt necessary!. Dufrene played so nobly
large and effortlessly with his great deep sound, and was always audible,
and never sharp.
Gerald Jackson, who had played alongside Dufrene
in some joint concert of the RPO and the Orchestre Nationale under Sir
Thomas Beecham, said that He made a sound like a great organ
and also that he had played every note in some impossible passage
in Dukass LApprenti Sorcier.
His playing was distinguished by the sophisticated
way he could vary his vibrato from nothing at all, to slow and calm, into
intense and exciting all within one phrase if necessary. I once heard
him play Petrouchka under Pierre Monteux, and especially
remember one spine-chilling phrase, which he played totally without vibrato,
but as usual perfectly in tune. When he played LApres Midi
it was amazing because the sound didnt come from that little spot
in the centre of the orchestra, but seemed to come from everywhere else,
gently and softly enveloping everything, maybe coming more from behind
than directly.
He studied with Philippe Gaubert , Marcel Moyse,
and Gaston Blanqhart (the dedicatee of one of Roussels Joueurs de
flute) and his playing sounds incredibly similar to the few recordings
there are of Gaubert; but when questioned about Gaubert, he said that
he didnt remember very much about him as he was so very young at
the time of the lessons and he considered that he had learned most from
Blanqhart.( Moyse he considered to be Mechant). However he
knew of my enthusiasm for Moyse, and served St Amour wine when we visited
him for the first time. He was a tall, nice looking, gentle person who
always refused to do any interviews for music magazines and was greatly
surprised that the Japanese produced the Art of Fernand Dufrene
He said that was not on good form in the Honnegger
Recording and had played badly whereas I get great pleasure from
the perfection of this performance. As he avoided any interviews, he avoided
teaching. I sought him out asking for lessons, but he politely declined,
saying that it was hard enough for him to play in the Orchestra.
He represents a pinnacle of musical integrity
amongst flute players, always putting the music before himself and was
in fact the purest and noblest servant of the music.
There are several recordings available of his
wonderful playing, notably:
Debussy: Boite a Joujoux (Martinon)
Stravinski: Pulcinella & Baiser de la Fee (cond. Markevitch)
Faure: Dolly suite & Pavane (Beecham)
Bizet: Carmen (Complete Opera) with Victoria re Los Angeles
(Beecham)
Villa Lobos: Villa Lobos par lui-meme. Conducted Villa Lobos
(French EMI)
And Finally an important disc for flautists The
Art of Fernand Dufrene containing:
Honegger: Concerto da Camera Villa Lobos;
Bachianas: Brasileiras No 6 for Flute and Basson (Conducted
.Villa Lobos);
Jolivet: Concerto for flute and strings (conducted by the composer).
This can be obtained in the London flute shops.
It is an interesting viewpoint of this mans
character that he only consented to record the Jolivet on the condition
that he could sit in his normal seat in the orchestra, as he found it
far too nerve racking to stand out in front.
He never stopped practising and try new pieces.
When we visited him 5 years ago, he was 84 years old, and it transpired
that he had just been practising the Rodrigo Concerto, but he pronounced
that he could find very little music in it!.
Geoffrey Gilbert said that Dufrene was a flautists
flute player and I can say Thank you Fer, you have given
me wonderful inspiration.
I have tried to emulate you throughout my career
but I dont expect to practice Rodrigo when I am 84!
William Bennett