Jean-Pierre Rampal
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Jean-Pierre Louis Rampal (7 January 1922 – 20 May 2000) was a celebrated French flautist, seen by many as the most influential of the 20th century.
Born at 20 rue Brochier in the southern French port city of Marseille, the son of Andrée (née Roggero) and flautist Joseph Rampal, Jean-Pierre Rampal became the first exponent of modern times to establish the solo flute on the international concert circuit and to attract the acclaim and large audiences comparable to those enjoyed by celebrity singers, pianists and violinists. This was not easily done in the immediate post-war years, as it was not usual for the solo flute to be featured widely in orchestral concerts. But Rampal's flair and presence (he was a big man to wield such a slim instrument so delicately) made the breakthrough and, as such, he personally paved the way for the next generation of flautist-superstars such as James Galway and, more recently, Emmanuel Pahud.
Rampal was a player in the classical French flute tradition (his father had been taught by Hennebains, who had also taught Marcel Moyse), although behind Rampal's superior technical facility lay the cavalier 'Latin' temperament of the Mediterranean south rather than the more formal character of the elite institutions of the Parisian north. His playing style was characterised especially by a bright sound, a sonorous elegance of phrasing lit up by a rich palette of subtle tone colours, combined with a dashing, lightly-articulated virtuosity that thrilled audiences in his heyday. He varied his natural vibrato sensitively to suit the intensity of the music he was playing, and he had a signature ability to snatch quick breaths in the middle of extended rapid passages without seeming to lose his grip on the persuasive sweep of his rendition.
He will be remembered principally for creating a popular fashion for the flute in the post-war years, for his recovery of a vast number of flute compositions from the Baroque era, and for spurring contemporary composers such as Poulenc to create new works that have become modern standards in the repertoire.
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[edit] Beginnings
Under the tutelage of his father Joseph, who was professor of flute at the Marseille Conservatoire and Principal Flute of the Marseille Symphony Orchestra, Jean-Pierre Rampal began playing the flute at the age of 12. He studied the Altes method at the Conservatoire of Marseille where he went on to win the First Prize in 1937, the year he also gave his first public recital at the Salle Mazenod in Marseille, aged only 16. By then he was also playing second flute alongside his father in the Orchestre des Concertes Classiques de Marseille (privately they played duets together almost every day). However, his remarkable career in music, which was to span more than half a century, began without the total encouragement of his parents. His mother and father would rather have seen him become a doctor or surgeon: a more reliable calling, they felt, than that of a professional musician. At the beginning of the second World War, Rampal duly entered medical school in Marseille and studied there for three years. But when in 1943 the authorities of the Nazi Occupation of France drafted him for forced labour in Germany, he went AWOL and made his way secretly to Paris where, by frequently changing his lodgings, it was easier to avoid detection. While there, he auditioned for flute classes at the Paris Conservatoire where, from January 1944, he studied with Gaston Crunelle (whom, years later, he was to succeed as professor at the Conservatoire). After just four months, in May that year, Rampal's performance of Jolivet's Le Chant de Linos won him the coveted First Prize in the conservatory's annual flute competition, an achievement that emulated that of his father Joseph in 1919.
[edit] Post-war success
In the Spring of 1945, after the Liberation of Paris, Rampal was invited by the composer Henri Tomasi, then conductor of the Orchestre National de France, to perform live on French National Radio the demanding Flute Concerto by Jacques Ibert, written for Marcel Moyse in 1934. It was the first of many such broadcasts and helped launch his concert career. In resolutely promoting the flute as a solo concert instrument at this time, Rampal acknowledged that he took his cue from Moyse. Moyse himself had enjoyed considerable popularity between the wars, although not on a truly international scale. Nevertheless he was a role model in that he had “definitely established a tradition for the solo flute”; Moyse, said Rampal in his autobiography, “unlocked a door that I continued to push open“.
With the war over, Rampal embarked on a series of performances, at first within France and then, in 1947, in Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Spain, and The Netherlands. From the beginning he was accompanied by the pianist and harpsichordist Robert Veyron-Lacroix (d.1991) whom he had met at the Paris Conservatoire in 1946. By contrast with, as Rampal saw it, his own somewhat emotional Provencal temperament, Veyron-Lacroix was a more refined character (a “true upper class Parisian”), but each immediately found with the other a musical partnership in perfect balance. In March 1949, in the face of some scepticism, they hired the Salle Gaveau in Paris to perform what then seemed the radical idea of a recital programme made up solely of chamber music for flute. Their modest success encouraged Rampal to continue along that track and throughout the early 50s the duo made regular radio broadcasts and gave concerts within France and elsewhere in Europe. In 1953 came their first international tour: an island-hopping journey through Indonesia where ex-pat audiences received them warmly. In 1954 onwards came his first concerts in eastern Europe, most significantly in Prague where in 1956 he premiered Jindrich Feld’s flute Concerto. In the same year he appeared in Canada, where, at the Menton festival, he played for the first time in concert with violinist Isaac Stern, who was to become a lifelong friend. By now, Rampal had America in his sights and on 14th February 1958 he and Robert Veyron Lacroix made their US debut with a recital of Poulenc, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Prokofiev at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. Afterwards Day Thorpe, music critic for the Washington Star, wrote: "Although I have heard many great flute players, the magic of Rampal still seems to be unique. In his hands, the flute is three or four music makers - dark and ominous, bright and pastoral, gay and salty, amorous and limpid. The virtuosity of the technique in rapid passages simply cannot be indicated in words." The following year, 1959, Rampal gave his first important concert in New York, at the Town Hall. And so began a long love-affair with the American concert-going public. Rampal’s successful partnership with Veyron-Lacroix produced many award-winning recordings - notably that in 1962 of the Bach flute sonatas - and lasted for some 35 years until when Veyron-Lacroix retired through of ill-health in the early 1980s. Rampal then formed a new musical partnership with American pianist John Steele Ritter.
Even as he pursued his career as a soloist, Rampal remained a dedicated ensemble player. In 1946, he and oboist Pierre Pierlot had founded the Quintette a Vent Francais (French Wind Quintet), formed of a group of musical friends who had made their way through the war: Rampal, Pierlot, clarinettist Jacques Lancelot, bassoonist Paul Hongne, and horn-player Gilbert Coursier. Early in 1944 they had played together, broadcasting at night from a secret radio station at the Club d’Essai in rue de Bec, Paris, a programme of music outlawed by the Nazis, including works with Jewish links by composers such as Hindemith, Schoenberg and Milhaud. The Quintet remained active until the 1960s.
Between 1955 and 1962 Rampal took up the post of Principal Flute at the Paris Opera, traditionally the most prestigious orchestral position open to a French flautist. Having been married in 1947 and now a father of two, the post offered a regular income to offset the vagaries of the freelance life, even though his solo career as a recording artist was developing rapidly.
[edit] Recovering the Baroque
Rampal's first commercial recording, made in 1946 for the Boite a Musique label in Montparnasse, Paris, was of Mozart’s Flute Quartet in D, with the Trio Pasquier. Among composers, Mozart was to remain his principal love (“Mozart, it is true, is a god for me,” he said in his autobiography), but Mozart by no means formed the cornerstone of Rampal's oeuvre. A key element in his success in the immediate post-war years, aside from his evident ability, was his passion for the music of the Baroque era. Aside from a few works by Bach and Vivaldi, Baroque music was still largely unrecognised when Rampal started out. He was well aware that his determination to promote the flute as a prominent solo instrument required a wide and flexible repertoire to support the endeavour. Accordingly, he seems to have been clear in his own mind from the beginning about the importance, as a ready-made resource, of the so-called ‘Golden Age of the Flute’ as the Baroque era had become known. Literally hundreds of concertos and chamber works written for the flute in the 18th century had fallen into obscurity, and he recognised that the sheer abundance of this early material might offer long-term possibilities for an aspiring soloist.
It should be said, however, that Rampal was not the first flute-player to have taken an interest in the Baroque. The catalogue of flute music recorded on 78rpm discs reveals that there was some taste for the music of Vivaldi, Telemann, Handel, Pergolesi, Scarlatti, Leclair, Loeillet and others. Paul Taffanel (1844-1908) had a liking for flute music of the Baroque and was the first really to revive the flute sonatas of J. S. Bach. Taffanel’s pupil Louise Fleury (1878-1926) continued this interest through his Société des Concerts d’Autrefois, and supervised the publication of a few scores. Marcel Moyse (1889-1984), who took the flute to a new level of popularity between the wars, recorded pieces by Telemann, Schultze, Couperin and, of Bach’s work, recorded Brandenburg concertos, the Suite No.2 in B Minor for flute and orchestra and the Trio Sonata for flute, violin and bass (BWV 1038). But none of Rampal’s predecessors had committed themselves with such obsessive and focussed dedication as he did, nor did they develop the encyclopaedic knowledge of the period and repertoire that he formed. Rampal’s ransacking of the Baroque repertoire was not at the level of passing acquaintance or cherry-picking. He went about his task systematically.
Even before the war, Rampal had begun collecting obscure sheet music from the Baroque, making himself familiar with original publishers and catalogues, even though very few published editions were then available. He went on to research in libraries and archives in Paris, Berlin, Turin and every other major city he performed in, and corresponded with others across the musical world. From original sources, he developed a detailed understanding of the Baroque style. He studied Quantz (1697-1773) and his famous treatise On Playing The Flute (1752) and later acquired an original copy of it. For Rampal, the Baroque legacy was fuel to set alight a renewed interest in the flute, and it was his energy in pursuing this goal that set him apart from his forbears. As has been noted elsewhere, whereas Rene Leroy, Georges Laurent and Georges Barrère had all recorded one or two of Bach’s flute sonatas between 1929 and 1939, between 1947 and 1950 Rampal recorded them all (for Boîte à Musique), and was regularly beginning to perform the complete Bach sonatas in recital, organising them across two evenings. Also, as early as 1950-1 he became the first to record all six of Vivaldi’s Op.10 concertos, an exercise he was to repeat several times in later years.
Rampal had sensed that the time was right. In an interview with the New York Times, he offered one explanation for the appeal of Baroque music after the war: "With all this bad mess we had in Europe during the war, people were looking for something quieter, more structured, more well balanced than Romantic music." In the process of excavating forgotten works for performance, Rampal had also to discover new ways of playing the music of that era. To the original texts he applied his own bright tone and the liveliness and freedom of his style, developing along the way a very individual approach to interpretation and, after the Baroque style, to improvised ornamentation. Throughout, Rampal was never tempted to perform on a period instrument; the movement that championed 'authentic' instruments for 'true' performance of Baroque music had not yet emerged. Instead, he drew on the full range of effects offered by the modern flute to reveal fresh elegance and nuance to Baroque compositions. It was this ‘modernity’ – the richness and clarity of his sound and the freedom and ‘personality’ in his expression – combined with a sense of hidden treasures being shared that caught the attention of a wider musical public. This striking effect can be heard on his earliest recordings, between 1946 and 1950. During this period also, Rampal quickly benefited from the birth of the long-playing gramophone record. Before 1950 all his recordings were on 78rpm discs. After 1950, the 33rpm LP era allowed much greater freedom to accommodate the energetic rate at which he was committing performances to record.
Thus, even in those first fifteen years after the war, he covered a huge amount of ground in this enterprise, and the post-war rediscovery of the Baroque became inseparable from Rampal’s own developing career. A great deal of the material Rampal performed and recorded he also published, supervising sheet music collections in both Europe and the USA. In his autobiography he remarked that he had felt it part of his “duty” to expand as much as possible the repertoire for fellow flautists as well as for himself. And in keeping the flute before the musical public, Rampal also played in as many groups and combinations as he could. In 1952 he founded the Ensemble Baroque de Paris, featuring Rampal himself, Veyron-Lacroix, Pierlot, Hongne and the violinist Robert Gendre. Remaining together over almost three decades, the ensemble proved in the 1950s one of the first musical groups to bring to light the chamber repertoire of the eighteenth century.
[edit] Collaborations
Through his recordings for labels including L'Oiseau-Lyre and, from the mid-50s, Erato, Rampal continued to give new currency to many 'lost' concertos by Italian composers such as Tartini, Cimarosa, Sammartini and Pergolesi (often collaborating with Claudio Scimone and I Solisti Veneti), and French composers including Devienne, Leclair and Loeillet, as well as other works from the Potsdam court of the flute-playing king Frederick the Great. His collaboration in Prague in 1955 with Czech flautist-conductor Milan Munclinger resulted in a notable recording of flute concertos by Benda and Richter. In 1956, with Louis Froment, he recorded concertos in A minor and G major by C.P.E. Bach. Haydn, Handel, Stamitz and Quantz also figured significantly in his repertoire. And he was open to experimentation, once, through laborious over-dubbing, playing all five parts in an early recording of a flute quintet by Boismortier. Driven by his famous exuberance to make music at every opportunity, Rampal was the first flautist to commit to record most, if not all, the flute works by Bach, Handel, Telemann, Vivaldi and other composers who now comprise the core repertoire for flute players.
Despite his commitment to the Baroque, Rampal extended his researches into the Classical and Romantic eras in order to establish some continuity to the repertoire of his instrument. Aside from recording familiar composers such as Mozart, Schumann and Schubert, Rampal also helped bring the works of composers such as Reinecke, Gianella and Mercadante back into view. Additionally, while the Baroque had provided the platform for his revival of the flute, Rampal was well aware that the health of its continuing appeal depended on he and others displaying the whole range of the repertoire and from the start his recital programmes included modern compositions also. It was Rampal, for example, who gave the first performance in the West of Prokofiev’s Sonata for flute and piano in D, which in the 1940s was in danger of being co-opted for the violin but which has since become established as a flute favourite. Over his career he performed all of the flute masterpieces that were composed in the first half of the 20th century, including works by Debussy, Ravel, Roussel, Ibert, Milhaud, Martinu, Kuhlau, Hindemith, Honegger, Dukas, Francaix, Damase and Feld.
By the early 1960s Rampal had become established as the first truly international modern flute virtuoso, and was performing with many of the world’s leading orchestras. Just before Rampal’s first recital tour of Australia in 1966, a leading newspaper echoed this sense of his now being part of a pantheon of musical stars: “he is to the flute what Rubinsetin is to the piano and Oistrakh to the violin.” This kind of celebrity rating became characteristic of Rampal’s publicity profile in America throughout the 1960s and 70s, where one newspaper hailed him as “the prince of flute-players.”
As a chamber musician he continued to collaborate with numerous other soloists, forming particularly close collaborations with violinist Isaac Stern and cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. A number of composers wrote especially for Rampal. These included Henri Tomasi (Sonatine pour flûte seule, 1949), Jean Francaix (Divertimento, 1953), Andre Jolivet (Concerto, 1949), Jindřich Feld (Sonata, 1957) and Jean Martinon (Sonatine). His audacious transcribing, at the composer's own suggestion in 1968, of Aram Khatchaturian's Violin Concerto (recorded 1970), showed Rampal's willingness to broaden the flute repertoire further by borrowing from other instruments. The only piece dedicated to him that Rampal never publicly performed was the Sonatine (1946) by Pierre Boulez which he found too abstract for his taste.
One particular piece written with him in mind has become a modern standard in the essential flute repertoire and linked forever with his name. Rampal’s compatriot Francis Poulenc was commissioned in 1957 by the Coolidge Foundation of America to write a new flute piece. The composer consulted Rampal on shaping the flute part and the result, in Rampal’s words, is "a pearl of the flute literature".The official world premiere of the Poulenc Sonata for Flute and Piano was given on 17 June 1957 by Rampal, accompanied by the composer, at the Strasbourg Festival. Unofficially, however, they had performed it a day or two earlier to a distinguished audience of one: the pianist Artur Rubinstein, a friend of Poulenc’s, was unable to stay in Strasbourg for the evening of the concert itself and so the duo obliged him with a private performance. Poulenc was then unable to travel to Washington for the US premiere on 14 February 1958, and so Robert Veyron Lacroix took his place and the sonata became a key offering in Rampal’s US recital debut and this helped launch his long-lived trans-Atlantic career.
[edit] l'homme à la flûte d'or
As the owner of the only gold flute (No.1375) made, in 1869, by the great French craftsman Louis Lot, Rampal was the first internationally renowned 'Man With the Golden Flute'. Rumours of the existence of the gold Lot had been circulating in France for years but no-one knew where the piece had gone. Rampal acquired the instrument in 1948, almost by chance, from an antiques dealer who had wanted to melt the instrument down for the gold, evidently unaware that he was in possession of the flute equivalent of a Stradivarius (it had originally been sent to Shanghai, a gift commissioned in the 1860s for French flautist Jean Remusat who became president of the Shanghai Philharmonic Society; somehow it found its way back to Europe in pieces). With family help, Rampal raised enough funds to rescue the precious instrument and went on to perform and record with it for eleven years. (His first performance on record with the unique gold Lot is thought to be the recording he made in April 1948 of Bach's E minor Sonata, BWV 1034.) In interviews he said he thought the gold, as opposed to silver, made his naturally bright, sparkling sound "darker", warmer. Only in 1958, when presented during his debut US tour with a gold instrument made, after the Lot pattern, by William S. Haynes Flute Company of Boston, did Rampal stop using the 1869 original. After one final recording in London (Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No.5 with the Academy of St Martin's in the Fields) he consigned the golden Lot to the safety of a bank vault in France and thereafter made the Haynes his concert instrument of choice.
[edit] Celebrity
Throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s Rampal remained especially popular in the USA, and in Japan where he had first toured in 1964. He toured America annually, performing at every leading venue, from Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall to the Hollywood Bowl (his first concert there was in 1973), and was a regular presence at the Mostly Mozart Festival at the Lincoln Centre in New York. At his busiest, he gave between 120 and 150 concerts a year. One of the music world's genuine enthusiasts for new experiences, his range extended well beyond the orthodox. Alongside the outpouring of classical recordings, he recorded Catalan and Scottish folk songs, Indian Music with sitarist Ravi Shankar, and, accompanied by the distinguihsed French harpist Lily Laskine, an album of Japanese folk melodies which was named album of the year in Japan where he became adored by a new generation of budding flute-players. He also recorded Scott Joplin rags and Gershwin, and notably collaborated with the French jazz pianist Claude Bolling. The Suite For Flute And Jazz Piano (1975), written by Bolling especially for Rampal, went to the top of the US Billboard charts and remained a hit there for ten years. This raised his profile with the American public even further and led to a TV appearance on Jim Henson's [[The Muppet Show]] where he played "Lo, Hear the Gentle Lark" with glove-puppet babe Miss Piggy. Throughout these years, Rampal continued to research and edit sheet music editions of flute works for publishing houses in Paris and in the US.
[edit] Achievement
Of the primal appeal of the flute, Rampal once told the Chicago Tribune: "For me, the flute is really the sound of humanity, the sound of man flowing, completely free from his body almost without an intermediary. . . . Playing the flute is not as direct as singing, but it's nearly the same." With his characteristic radiance of tone, combined with a keen musicality and the tremendous technical facility that gave freedom to his playing, Rampal can almost be said to have re-invented the instrument's personality in the years following the war. Through him, the full range of expressive powers of which the flute was capable were convincingly displayed to a wider public. In the process, he spurred contemporary composers to make fresh explorations of the instrument's potential in the solo and chamber repertoires. Overall, therefore, through his long and prolific performing and recording career Rampal can rightly be judged to have re-established the solo flute's position in the musical pantheon. And with somewhere in the region of 400 original recordings to his name, it is widely assumed that Rampal is the most often recorded classical soloist of all.
Listening back to many of those recordings, it is clear that Rampal was in his prime in the 1950s and 1960s; the full flood of his talent can be heard in many a bold recording of concerto and sonata work from that period. Many of the recordings he made in the 1970s also have a mature assurance about them and the adventurous musicality of his performance, combined with a huge and sensitive dynamic range, continued to serve him well. The judgement is less certain with his work from the 1980s and 1990s. Some recordings from the early 1980s stand up well to examination, but age brought an inevitable decline in the intensity and, sometimes, accuracy of his later performances on record and in the concert hall. Nothing, however, can overshadow the brilliance with which he embarked on his early solo career. As those first recordings from 1946 onwards testify, his legacy is secure.
Rampal's commitment to the Baroque should not disguise the pragmatic modernity of his approach to music-making. For those who signed up to the late-20th century fashion for recording Baroque music on 'authentic' or 'original' instruments, Rampal's renditions on his golden flute may have come to seem anachronistic. But Rampal himself remained unapologetic, often wondering aloud whether Bach or Mozart would have tolerated the Baroque instrument ("little more than an awkward pipe") if they'd had its more perfectly-tuned, technically superior modern equivalent at their disposal. In answer to the conundrum of Mozart's well-known remark that he couldn't bear the flute, for example, Rampal once said in an interview: "I don't think that statement by Mozart is to be taken too seriously. At the time he wrote it, Mozart had troubles with love and with money. His patron wasn't satisfied with the composer's first try and almost threw the composition back in Mozart's face. Remember, Mozart always wrote on commission, and at the time the flute was one of the instruments that most bad amateurs could play just a little. Mozart didn't detest the flute, he detested bad flautists."
By all accounts, aside from his own recorded legacy, it was as much through his inspiration of other musicians that Rampal's contribution can be appreciated. Throughout the busiest years of his furiously peripatetic concert career, Rampal continued to find time to teach others. Following the foundation, in 1959, of the Nice Summer Academy, Rampal held classes there annually until 1977, while in 1969 he succeeded Gaston Crunelle as flute professor at the Paris Conservatoire, a position he held until 1981. When the James Galway, aged just 21, sought him out in Paris in the early 60s he felt that he was going to meet "the master". As Galway says in his own autobiography (1978): “For me, of course, it was simply a sensation to meet this great musician; like a fiddler meeting Heifez.” Rampal took him along to the Paris Opera to watch him play and, said Galway, inspired him rather than taught him on the occasions they were together. William Bennett, too, has commented on Rampal's infectious enthusiasm for music-making: "his repute came more from his musical sparkle and the happy personality which radiated to the audience". Bennett also sought Rampal out for lessons 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". Rampal's lasting achievement, therefore, was not only in bringing the flute out of the orchestral shadows and into the international limelight as an instrument of versatility and, in the right hands, beauty; it was also in inspiring others to follow him and go further.
During his lifetime Rampal had many honours bestowed upon him. His several Grand Prix du Disques from the Charles Cros Academy included awards for his recording of Vivaldi’s Op.10 flute concertos (1954), his recording with the Chamber Orchestra of Prague (Milan Munclinger) concertos by Benda and Richter (1955), and in 1976 the Grand Prix ad honorem du Président de la République for his overall recording career to date. He also received the “Réalité” Oscar du Premier Virtuose Francais (1964), the Edison Prize; the Prix Mondial du Disque; the 1978 Leonie Sonning Prize (Denmark), the 1980 Prix d’Honneur of the 13th Montreux World Recording Prize for all his recordings; and the Lotos Club Medal of Merit for his lifetime’s achievement. State honours included being made Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur (1966) and Officier de la Légion d’Honneur (1979). He was also made a Commandeur de l’Ordre National du Mérite (1982) and Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres (1989). The City of Paris presented him with the Grande Médaille de la Ville Paris (1987), and in 1994 he received the Trophée des Arts from the French Institute/Alliance Française. In 1988 he was created President d’honneur of the French Flute Association “La Traversière”, while in 1991 the National Flute Association of America gave him its inaugural Lifetime Achievement award. In 1994 the Ambassador of Japan presented Rampal with the Order du Tréasor Sacre, the highest distinction presented by the Japanese Government in recognition of having inspired a new generation of aspiring flute-players in that country.
The Jean-Pierre Rampal Flute Competition, begun in his honour in 1980 and open to flautists of all nationalities born after 8 November 1971, is held tri-annually as part of the Concours internationaux de la Ville de Paris.
Rampal and his harpist wife Françoise (née Bacqueryrisse) were married for over fifty years and made their home in Paris, living in the appropriately named Avenue Mozart. They have two children, Isabelle and Jean-Jacques. Each year they holidayed at their home on Corsica where Jean-Pierre was able to indulge his passion for boating, fishing and photography. Well-known for his love of good food, he liked to maintain a private rule wherever he went on tour that he would eat “only the cuisine of the country” he was in, and he looked forward to his post-concert dinners with relish. He developed a particular fondness for Japanese cuisine and in 1981 wrote the introduction to The Book of Sushi. Rampal's autobiography Music, My Love appeared in 1989 (published by Random House).
[edit] Leaving the stage
In later years, Rampal took up the conductor's baton with more frequency, but he continued to play well into his late 70s. The last work of importance dedicated to him was Penderecki’s Flute concerto which he premiered at the Lincoln Centre in 1992. Rampal's last public recital was held at the Theatres des Champs-Elysées in Paris in March 1998 when, at the age of 76, he performed works by Mozart, Beethoven, Czerny, Poulenc and Franck. His last recording was made with the Pasquier Trio and Claudi Arimany (trio and quartets by Mozart and Hoffmeister) in Paris in December 1999. When, in May 2000, Rampal died in Paris of heart failure, aged 78, French President Jacques Chirac led the tributes, saying "his flute . . . spoke to the heart. A light in the musical world has just flickered out." Issac Stern, who had collaborated extensively with Rampal, recalled: "Working with him was pure pleasure, sheer joy, exuberance. He was one of the great musicians of our time, who really changed the world's perception of the flute as a solo instrument." Fellow flautist and musical commentator Eugenia Zukerman observed: "He played with such a rich palette of color in a way that few people had done before and no one since. He had an ability to imbue sound with texture and clarity and emotional content. He was a dazzling virtuoso, but more than anything he was a supreme poet." At his funeral, fellow flautists played the Adagio from Boismortier’s second flute concerto in A minor in recognition of his lifelong passion for Baroque music.
Jean-Pierre Rampal is buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris.
In 2005, the Association Jean-Pierre Rampal was founded in France to perpetuate the study and appreciation of Rampal's contribution to the art of flute-playing.
[edit] Discography
There remains the difficulty of cataloguing Rampal's vast number of recordings. His earliest recordings, 1946-1950, were on 78rpm discs, many for the Parisian Boite a Musique label. With the opening of the 33rpm LP era, he recorded for over 20 different labels between 1950 and 1970. Among the most significant of these was the French Erato label, founded in 1953, for whom he made approximately 100 recordings. In 1964 alone he recorded 17 albums, including three complete sets (of flute pieces by Mozart, Handel and Beethoven) in addition to concertos and other works. In 1979 he became exclusively contracted to the CBS label (later Sony Classical) and for them he made well over 60 albums. And so on. This proliferation proved bewildering even to Rampal himself. In his autobiography he referred to his own "enormous discography, one that I can't even keep track of myself." This may be one reason why that book contains no discography for him. However, to get a sense of the range and number of his recordings, see one collector's list here: http://www.elenayarritu.com/rampallp.html
[edit] Rampal on DVD
By comparison with the vast number of his CD and vinyl recordings in circulation, commercially available video and DVD footage of Rampal is relatively scarce. Collectors will be especially interested in three DVDs that contain live performances by Jean Pierre Rampal:-
The Art of Jean Pierre Rampal 1956-1966 (Video Artists International): this is a two-volume DVD compilation featuring a series of Radio-Canada “Telecasts”, broadcast and recorded during the years when Rampal was at the peak of his powers. In this rare footage, retrieved from the archives of CBC Montreal, Rampal is accompanied by harpsichordist Robert Veyron-Lacroix and by the McGill Chamber Orchestra conducted by Alexander Brott. Volume one of this fine set of live broadcasts includes: Boccherini’s Concerto for Flute and Orchestra in D major (broadcast 1 March 1956); Haydn’s Concerto for flute, harpsichord and string orchestra in F major, with Debussy’s Syrinx for unaccompanied flute (broadcast March 28, 1957); Couperin’s Concert Royal IV, with J S Bach’s Sonata for flute and harpsichord in G minor, BWV 1020 (broadcast 27 December 1961). Volume two features Mozart’s Flute Concerto No. 2 in D major, K.314, together with the Flute Concerto No. 1 in G major, K.313 (broadcast 24 February 1966).
Frances Poulenc and Friends (Emi Classics): Jean-Pierre Rampal is featured twice in this compilation of various appearances by the composer on French television, along with performances of his work recorded after his untimely death in 1963. After a brief interview with the composer, he is joined on set by Rampal who is accompanied by Poulenc in a performance of the slow movement from his Flute Sonata. Rampal returns in a later TV broadcast to play the complete Flute Sonata, this time accompanied by Robert Veyron-Lacroix. Additional performances are provided by artists including pianist Jacques Février, cellist Maurice Gendron, baritone Gabriel Bacquier, organist Jean-Jacques Grunenwald, soprano Denise Duval and others, together with the ORTF National Orchestra conducted by Georges Prêtre.
Bolling: Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano: this features a live televised performance from 1976 of Claude Bolling’s cross-over Suite (1973), written for Jean-Pierre Rampal (who plays a ‘classical’ line to Bolling’s jazz piano) and which by then had become a runaway success in the Billboard charts of America. Special guest double bass-player Max Hediguer is also featured.
[edit] Films
L. Subramaniam: Violin From the Heart (1999), directed by Jean Henri Meunier, includes a scene of Rampal performing with L. Subramaniam.)
[edit] Publications about Rampal
Bel Canto Flute: The Rampal School (2003; Winzer Press) by Sheryl Cohen is a study of Rampal’s methods and influence by an American flautist and teacher who studied with both Jean-Pierre Rampal and his fellow Marseille flautist Alain Marion.
[edit] External links
L'Association Jean-Pierre Rampal [1]
Jean Pierre-Rampal Flute Competition [2]
Fanfaire tributes to Rampal [3]
William Bennett’s website, with recollection of Rampal [4]
Jean-Pierre Rampal in Nice [5]
