New Classical Tracks: Something for Everyone

James Galway - The Man with the Golden Flute (The Complete RCA Collection)

When James Galway started taking flute lessons with his Uncle Joe as a young boy, his aspirations were simple. "The only thing I had in mind was getting from one flute lesson to the other without messing it all up," Galway recalls.

As he turns 75 this month, Sir James is very excited to release his complete RCA collection in one very large boxed set. As he scans the 71 CDs that document his legacy, he has to admit, his career has been pretty exceptional. "The only other person I know who has an output like this is probably Heifetz," Galway ponders, "or maybe Rubinstein or … what's the name of the other big piano player? Horowitz. Maybe. I don't know how many records Horowitz had. I have quite a few of his recordings. I have recordings of all of these guys because they were such a huge influence. But the people who influenced me most were the singers."

The secret to Galway's own lyrical style comes from his love of opera. "Mainly what really interests me mostly with the singers is their control over their voices," he explains. "And when I say 'control', I mean the color of their voices going from one note to the next, one interval, how they deal with it and how they go from the end of one phrase to the beginning of a new phrase, sometimes without breathing. All of these things register with me and I try to incorporate them into my own playing.

"It's really the management of the breath. I have a rather small frame and there are people who are much bigger than me who have a worse problem, because they're not good at managing the breath. There are all sorts of breaths to take. At the very beginning you take a very good deep breath and then as you proceed you just take a little sniff to get you from A to B, et cetera. Then you can continue. Even in a folk song — for example, if I play Brian Boru's March — you see, if you don't breathe in these obvious places, people say wow, listen to this guy's breath control! Well, it is breath control and it's very good breath control and it does the music good as well."

This elfin pied piper from Belfast began his solo career in 1975 after leaving his post as principal flute with the Berlin Philharmonic with legendary conductor Herbert von Karajan. Galway has spent the past several decades proving that his instrument has endless possibilities. His willingness to explore numerous different musical styles has invited new audiences into the world of classical music. "There are so many different people who listen to me and we've made records to keep them all happy," Galway explains. "We made a very good one with Cleo Laine and with Henry Mancini and I've made concerto records, modern American flute concertos, C. P. E. Bach flute concertos, which is a really great record, I think. And Quantz flute concertos. You know, there's film music — and so there's really something in there for everyone."

As you're thumbing through this massive collection, those C. P. E. Bach Flute concertos are a great place to start. "He was a bridge between his dad and the German Romantic movement, the beginning of it," Galway explains, "and they are phenomenally difficult. As you know, he was employed by Frederick the Great. But I don't think he thought much of Frederick because he never actually wrote a flute concerto. He transcribed the harpsichord concertos for flute and also for cello. He did write one piece which was unaccompanied, which made me want to think that Frederick was maybe not good in the rhythm department or the intonation department. Well, he was the King of Germany! He didn't have a lot of time to practice the flute because he conducted something like 50 wars in his lifetime. I mean, he was a fantastic man, really," Galway chuckles.

Nevertheless, he adds, these works are very challenging. "There are a lot of difficult intervals, not intervals one-off, but intervals one after the other and figures going. The passage work is very difficult all the time. The third movement is like the Flight of the Bumblebee in D minor. It's not so much chromatic, but it really gets a move on."

Just in case you're wondering, at age 75, James Galway has no plans to slow down — however, he may change things up a bit. "I think I'm concentrating now on doing fewer performances and more teaching," he says. "That's really what I want to get into because I think I'm teaching on a different level. I'm teaching on the level of somebody who has only played concertos and sonatas and flute recitals, all that sort of thing, for the last 45 years or something like that. Whereas a lot of other teachers are teaching from the schoolroom perspective.

"I have to say, I really enjoy discussing these big pieces with the students," Galway continues. "There's a lot to learn. Any good teacher should be able to change the child in front of them immediately, somehow or another. I had a kid turn up the other day, just 12. And I gave her a lesson and her mother called me back two weeks later and said, 'She hasn't stopped playing the flute since!' "

At age 75, Sir James Galway continues to build bridges to the world of classical music.

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