Early Music America Fall 2012 - (Page 39)

What brought you back to the States? The idea to return home came after I had my son. I felt like I’d had many years of really, really good music-making—orchestral playing and recording at the very highest level. But I wanted to raise my son in the U.S.—in the Northwest. My husband is Irish and was keen to come to America. And I knew I wasn’t destined to be a permanent ex-patriot. So you were in England? Some people don’t mind the idea, but I First, I freelanced in Paris for a year did. The years with Gardiner in the U.K. and a half, and then I lived in London were invaluable to me as a flutist, as a for 12 years. I was very fortunate to get the job of principal flute with John Eliot musician, and I made wonderful and lasting friendships, but I wanted to Gardiner’s two orchestras—English Baroque Soloists and L ’Orchestre Revolu- return home with my family. tionnaire et Romantique. I was now playWhat makes a performance memoing both Baroque and the six–keyed rable for you? Classical flute. This was an incredibly I think what makes a performance exciting and rewarding job. We toured often through Europe and to Japan, and memorable for me is when, as an instrumentalist, I don’t get in the way. I play made a world tour as well. We permusic I love, and I feel I can just sing in formed and recorded the complete the slow movements and play with the Beethoven symphonies, all the Mozart spirit of the quick movements. It’s then operas and so much more incredible repertoire. One had to be at the very top that I feel as if I can really convey the beauty and spirit of the music to an of one’s abilities on the instruments— audience. Another aspect of a memoand stay there. He was a very inspiring rable performance happens when you conductor and also very demanding. a suitcase and see what I could do. From my perspective today, it seems like an incredibly wild thing to have done. And I wasn’t so young either! There was a kind of blind optimism, the kind that can get you into situations you otherwise wouldn’t find yourself in if you gave it a bit more thought. share a very similar musical language with colleagues. Words are barely necessary and preparing the music for performance is not a struggle, but a pleasure. A lot of younger performers graduate these days as superb musicians. But their musical training has given them few clues about how to exploit what they know to make a living. Did that same situation apply to you? Oh, yes. I had no training in how to market what I’d been spending all my life learning how to do, except learning orchestral excerpts for auditions. My experience has been that the discipline and sensitivity it takes to become a really skilled musician has little to do with skills necessary for actually making a living at it. Frequently, one hears of really wonderful musicians who have a difficult time “making it,” and they end up doing something else—computers, perhaps. And then there are people who aren’t particularly skilled as musicians but who are really good at selling themselves! Sometimes you find the Continued on page 58 Robert Willoughby, Noted Traverso Teacher, Fêted at Oberlin While at Oberlin in the mid-seventies, Janet See studied with the legendary flute pedagogue Robert Willoughby, whose 90th birthday was celebrated at the Conservatory last October. After service in World War II as a B-24 pilot, Willoughby, who studied with Joseph Mariano at Eastman and Boston Symphony principal flutist George Laurent at the New England Conservatory (in a line that included Philippe Gaubert [see page 21] and Paul Taffanel), became assistant principal flute of the Cleveland Orchestra. Willoughby’s students at Oberlin, where he began teaching while still with the Cleveland Orchestra, include a number of prominent players in American symphony orchestras as well as many in the first crop of American Baroque flutists. “What a God-awful instrument,” was Willoughby’s first impression, but a sabbatical in 1970 took him to Holland where he studied with Frans Vester and Frans Brüggen. Thereafter, he encouraged his flute students to explore the instrument, and graduates from that era, in addition to See, include Eileen Grycky, who plays with Brandywine Baroque, Greer Ellison, former principal flute of the Portland Baroque Orchestra, Wendy Rolfe, who performs with the Handel and Haydn Society and Boston Baroque, Courtney Wescott, flutist with the Seattle Baroque Orchestra, and Jed Wentz, who teaches now at the Amsterdam Conservatory. Willoughby played with the Oberlin Baroque Ensemble and taught at Oberlin’s Baroque Performance Institute; his teaching continues at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, MA. SIDEBAR PHOTOS: HARVEY WOLFSON Left, Robert Willoughby at his 90th birthday celebration at Oberlin. Above, from left, Greer Ellison, Catharina Meints, and Wendy Rolfe (with harpsichordist Webb Wiggins) serenade him with the Bach G major trio sonata, BWV 1039. Early Music America Fall 2012 39

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Early Music America Fall 2012

Editor’s Note
EMA Competition
Sound Bytes
Musings: Listening Forward
Profile: A Classical Playlist on Your Cable Television
Recording Reviews
Reconstructing Spanish Songs from the Time of Cervantes
Janet See: Traversist on Two Continents
Musical Mosaic Explores “Perspectives of Interspersing Peoples”
Book Reviews
Ad Index
In Conclusion: Conducting Early Music

Early Music America Fall 2012