A Nice Mix

Atarah Ben-Tovim MBE is describing the circumstances behind her recording of The Serious Doll, from Edward Elgar's Nursery Suite. "We never knew it was a flute solo," she says. "Never even heard of it. We turned up for an EMI recording and I said to Sir Charles Groves, "What's this?".

"It's a flute solo," he said.

"What? I had never seen it. It had never been in print before."

She's telling me this anecdote during the Fourth Convention of the British Flute Society (BFS), at the University of York. Ben-Tovim chairs the BFS, is the author of The Right Instrument for Your Child, now in its fifth edition, and is well known for her Children's Classic Concerts, celebrating their tenth birthday at the Barbican Centre this September.

"York is a beautiful place to be, a nice university, very good music facilities, with an excellent main concert hall," she says. "It's proving a successful place to have a convention. There's a nice mix; we've got people from Denmark, Finland, France, China, Israel and Japan. I'm the Chairman, but it's Trevor Wye who created the Flute Society and the Conference. He goes round the world and makes the contacts."

Ben-Tovim is careful to recognise the business support that the BFS receives. "No convention is possible without trade, who advertise and actually buy stands," she says. "It is important; they cover the cost of the convention, a symbiotic relationship."

In the trade stand rooms much music was available, together with music desks, ocarinas, CDs, cases, metronomes, tuners, engraving services, instrument stands and flutes - lots and lots of flutes. Most sensational was a giant contrabass flute, on sale at ,18,090. A surprising and delightful aspect of the trade room during Friday afternoon was the informal presence of Sir James Galway, practising a tricky version of Tico Tico, unaware of anything else.

Three hundred of the eighteen hundred members have enrolled for what is proving to be a good-humoured fraternal celebration lasting four days. Events are almost nonstop from breakfast time to bedtime, making it difficult to sample everything.

There were lectures. "Bottoms Up: How the Basso Continuo Shapes Baroque Flute Music," was presented by the sharply dressed and lucid Ardal Powell, expressing the idea that a flute player can't play effectively without awareness of the harmonies. In short, the player must emphasise the things that the listener is not expecting to hear, and treat the obvious more plainly.

The obvious was avoided in "The Expert Speaks", by Patricia Morris of the BBC Symphony, who revealed that in certain orchestral works a tiny Japanese whistle is used as a piccolo substitute for a sustained note, pianissimo, at the very top of the range. One to listen out for. Her talk was partly in the form of a master class using the excellent and well-prepared Rieko Mikame, from Sapporo, who played the piccolo. Morris pointed out that the piccolo is the only instrument that can join the strings when they are up in the harmonics, "so high that they play with their fingers up their noses".

More secrets, from a different chair, came from the affable Paul Edmund-Davies, a member of the London Symphony Orchestra for the past twenty years. After describing Trevor Wye - his first tutor - as the coolest flute teacher, who took his flute class to the local motocross circuit, Paul described his own career. Using his flute to illustrate points about orchestral auditions, he gave a guide to the importance of what he describes as "radar", the need for an orchestral player to be aware of what else is going on during a performance.

Philippa Davies spoke with vivacity and confidence about her experiences with The Fires of London and the London Mozart Players, then played two movements from the new Duo for Flute and Piano, composed by her husband and accompanist Jan Wellern Nelleke.

Polished performances were the essence of the congress. Flautist Marco Granados and guitarist/composer Aquiles Baez, both Venezuelan musicians living in New York, were sensational. And accompanists Clifford Benson and Richard Shaw gave accomplished support in several flute-and-piano chamber music performances.

The many Japanese delegates were distinguished by immaculate playing, exemplary dress onstage and offstage, and decorous manners. Composer Dave Heath, who has composed for Nigel Kennedy and Evelyn Glennie, travelled from Japan to conduct soloist William Bennett with the visiting Japanese flute choir Concert Lumière, in the UK première of his Golden Sunset, written in honour of legendary flute craftsman Albert Cooper. Elsewhere, Tim Liu's unaccompanied performance revealed that a dizi is a Chinese membrane flute, and Tohru Kamiya showed how to fashion drinking straws into flutes which surprised us by blowing bubbles, or functioning in other unexpected ways.

The hilarious Chuckerbutty Ocarina Quartet, led by Michael Copley of 'Cambridge Buskers' fame graced Sunday afternoon with a programme that included the Lohengrin prelude, a Sicilian Dance (Allegro Mafioso), and 'something by JS Bach's French nephew, Offen.' For a movement of Beethoven's First Symphony, an extra was needed. The question: 'Can anyone here play the ocarina?' resulted in President Galway joining the Chuckerbutty Quartet. Jimmy played the ocarina magnificently, of course. 'He's wasted on the flute,' muttered Copley. It was all good fun, with never a dull moment.

The next congress? View details from the BFS.