Great principal flutes - the French school #1
Episode 1: Gaubert, Moyse, Lavaillotte, Dufrêne
Welcome flute friends!
To start 2024, I’m excited to be able to share a fascinating flute podcast series from Radio France Musique with you. Over four episodes, Grandes flûtes solos—l’école française (Great principal flutes—the French school) surveys French flute players from Gaubert, Moyse and Crunelle through to Larrieu, Marion and Debost, all illustrated with some marvellous recordings. Later episodes look beyond France to discuss the greatest 20th century principal flutes from around the world.
When I first came across this programme, I knew immediately that these episodes should be heard and enjoyed by flute players outside the France. I’ve been working hard to transcribe and translate them all so that I can bring them to you. My aim is to make Christian Merlin’s superb review and choice of historic recordings available to English-speaking flutists worldwide.
There are more episodes in the pipeline, and I’ll be releasing my translation and notes for them every Friday over the coming months.
A few notes on the translation
I’ve aimed to provide a detailed summary of the podcasts rather than a verbatim translation. I’ve left out general comments (things like schedule changes and station idents), and have adapted the sentences to make them flow better in English. I’ve ensured that I’ve kept the sense fully intact. An ellipsis (…) indicates where I’ve omitted a sentence that wasn’t strictly relevant, and any words in square brackets [like this] are my own inclusions which I’ve added for clarity.
I’ve time-coded the flute recordings and included all their details so that you can find them easily and return to them for further listening. I’ve also added links to all the performers, composers, and orchestras mentioned for quick reference and additional background.
I hope these additions will make the programme and my translation a useful resource for flute players everywhere.
How to listen to the podcast
The play button below will take you to the web version of the Radio France podcast. There, click on the pink > écouter button to listen.
My translation and notes for Ep. 1 begin below. Happy listening!
Au Coeur de l’Orchestre | At the Heart of the Orchestra
A Radio France Musique podcast series presented by Christian Merlin
Great principal flutes—the French School (episode 1 of 4)
Programme ident 00:00. Content commences 00:29
Presenter: Christian Merlin
Hello everyone, and welcome to At the Heart of the Orchestra for a sixth season of [this podcast series]. Who would have imagined that when this programme was launched in 2018! …
In my review of the great historical incumbents of orchestral chairs, I was still missing a complete series on flute players.
The French school was at the forefront of flute playing from very early on. [It could be considered to have been] founded by François Devienne around the time of the French Revolution.
By the first half of the twentieth century, its driving force was an exceptional man, Philippe Gaubert. Born in 1879, Gaubert was a great conductor as well as a talented composer. But first and foremost, he was a flute player. He joined the orchestra of the [Paris] Opéra in 1897 and the [Orchestre de] la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire in 1901. He was firstly principal flute [of the Opéra] before taking over as director, and taught at the Paris Conservatoire from 1919 onwards.
The following recording [of Gaubert playing his own work, Madrigal] was made in 1919. It's [a real piece of] sound “archaeology”, but what a thrill it is to hear this pioneer who trained French flautists up to the 1930s.
Recording 1: 01:42 to 05:31
Philippe Gaubert
Madrigal
Philippe Gaubert (flute)
Label: Gramophone. Recorded 1919.
Philippe Gaubert … succeeded Adolphe Hennebains at both the Conservatoire and the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire. But his mentor was Paul Taffanel, who had been instrumental in the shift from the wooden to the silver flute at the end of the nineteenth century. Like Gaubert after him, [Taffanel] was both a composer and conductor.
Taffanel had three outstanding pupils: Philippe Gaubert, whose mother had been a governess in the Taffanel family; Georges Barrère, who would go on to premiere Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune and make a career in the United States; and Marcel Moyse, a “god” of the flute from the 1930s to the 1950s. “For my generation, he was the king," said Jean-Pierre Rampal.
Marcel Moyse, from the Jura region [on the northern Franco-Swiss border], was born in 1889. He was principal flute at the Opéra-Comique and the Société des Concerts, and succeeded Gaubert as professor at the Paris Conservatoire from 1932. He was reputed to be the better teacher.
During the Occupation, he fled to the United States for obvious reasons, and he liked it so much that he settled there. There, he was one of the co-founders of the Marlboro Festival, along with Rudolph Serkin and Adolf Busch.
Moyse adopted the guiding principles of his predecessors, Taffanel and Gaubert: namely that the flute should sing like the voice; that [the tone] should not have a mechanical, uniform vibrato; and that the tone colour should change constantly, to reflect the musical intention.
Jacques Ibert wrote his flute concerto for Marcel Moyse [and we hear Moyse himself perform the first movement in the next recording].
Recording 2: 07:10 to 11:36
Jacques Ibert
Concerto for flute, 1st mvt: Allegro
Marcel Moyse (flute)
Orchestra directed by Eugène Bigot
Label: Lys. Recorded 1935.
That was Jacques Ibert's Concerto for flute: composed in 1933, premiered in 1934 and recorded in 1935. Eugène Bigot conducted the first movement, with Marcel Moyse as soloist. His pure, diamond-like sound and broad, lilting tone, undoubtedly helped to set in motion a movement away from the flute solely as an ethereal, untouchable instrument, towards one that was sensual and even carnal.
At the same time that Moyse was at the Opéra-Comique at Salle Favart, Lucien Lavaillotte, another pupil of Philippe Gaubert, was principal flutist at the Opéra at Palais Garnier.
[Lavaillotte] was born in Montceau-les-Mines [in 1898] and joined the Opéra in 1929. He had been with the Société des Concerts since 1923, however, he did not become a soloist until 1938, after Marcel Moyse left. Lavaillotte was also a painter and, it might be said, he saw music as images.
In all the great recordings of the 1950s with [Charles] Munch, [André] Cluytens, Manuel Rosenthal, and even in the Beethoven symphonies of Carl Schuricht, whenever there's a flute solo, you can be sure that it's Lucien Lavaillotte playing.
But here, I have chosen one of the masterpieces of chamber music to bridge the gap between the end of the previous season [of Au Cœur de l’Orchestre], which I ended with Debussy. So now we come back to Debussy, and his Sonata for flute, viola and harp, here performed by Lavaillotte, with his colleagues from the Opéra, Pierre Ladhuie on viola and Bernard Galais on harp.
Recording 3: 13:10 to 18:54
Claude Debussy
Sonata for flute, viola and harp, 2nd mvt: Interlude
Lucien Lavaillotte (flute)
Pierre Ladhuie (viola)
Bernard Galais (harp)
Label: Barclay. Recorded 1957.
All the poetry of Debussy comes to the fore in this second movement of the Sonata for flute, viola and harp, performed by the Opéra principals, Pierre Ladhuie on viola, Bernard Galais on harp and Lucien Lavaillotte on flute.
The Orchestre National was founded in 1934, when Lavaillotte was at the Opéra, Moyse was at the Opéra-Comique and both were at the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire. In fact, next year [Radio France] will be celebrating the 90th anniversary of this orchestra, which is part of the RTF [Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française, the state broadcaster]. It took some time for certain positions to settle down, but as far as the principal flute goes, we got it right the first time.
That first incumbent was Fernand Dufrêne, born in 1911. He was 23 years old when he joined [the orchestra] and he stayed for 40 years.
Originally from the north of France, his father was the conductor of the municipal band of Caudry, a commune in the Cambrai region. His talent was recognized after a prize-winning performance in Cambrai at age 11 and he was sent to Paris. There, as his family was of modest means, he financed his studies by playing in cinemas. Dufrêne was a pupil of Philippe Gaubert, like Moyse and Lavaillotte, but his real mentor was Gaston Blanquart, principal flute of the Concerts Colonne and the favourite flutist of Ravel (another northerner, from the Bassin Minier).
In 1939, Fernand Dufrêne was drafted and taken prisoner. He spent a year and a half as a captive, and on his return, instead of being automatically reinstated to his post at the Orchestre National, he was forced to re-audition, which was humiliating to say the least. He won his position back with flying colours.
Of all those I've mentioned [in this podcast]—each one of them giants as principal flutes—for me [the podcaster, Christian Merlin] Fernand Dufrêne is the greatest. No one has played the solos from Daphnis et Chloé or Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune with such magic. He was, however, also interested in the music of his own time, for example that of André Jolivet. [In the next recording we hear Dufrêne perform the Jolivet concerto under the baton of Jolivet himself.]
Recording 4: 20:52 to 27:19
André Jolivet
Concerto for flute and string orchestra: Andante cantabile and Allegro scherzando
Fernand Dufrêne (flûte)
Orchestre National de la RTF
Conductor André Jolivet
Label: EMI. Recorded 1955
When Fernand Dufrêne died [in 2000], the great flutist Michel Debost wanted to buy his Louis Lot flute. After trying it out, Debost declared that the instrument was excellent but added that it was really Fernand Dufrêne who was excellent, and in truth he owed nothing to his instrument.
[In this recording from 1955] Fernand Dufrêne performed André Jolivet's concerto with the Orchestre National.
Philippe Petit produced this programme at short notice, for which he is warmly thanked. Matthieu Leroux was at the console, and [in the next episode] we'll be back with more stories about the great orchestral flutists. I wish you all a very good day, and hope you have enjoyed listening to [this programme] from France Musique.
Broadcast August 28, 20231
I hope you enjoy the podcasts as much as I have. And if you have favourite recordings of these great players or your own stories or other information to share, let me know in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you.
Academic citation style: Radio France Musique, Aug 28, 2023, Grandes flûtes solos—l’école française (1/4), Christian Merlin; tr. and ed. Elisabeth Parry, 2023. Accessed [date]. <https://elisabethparry.substack.com/p/french-flute-podcast-ep1>