Word: flutist
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...Switzerland. Shaffer ranges out from Budapest to Berne, Australia to South Africa, to give 50 to 60 concerts and recitals a year. From the front door, she can also ski directly to the lift lines of the Gstaad ski area. This is more important than it might seem. A flutist must have the wind and physical stamina of a well-conditioned athlete...
Memorials to great musicians usually take the form of plaques, busts or scholarships. When the time came five years ago to create a memorial to William Kincaid, for 39 years first flutist of the Philadelphia Orchestra, it seemed that something more was called for. So 70 of his former pupils and friends, together with Conductors Eugene Ormandy and Leopold Stokowski, chipped in to commission a new piece for flute by an American composer. Just as there was no doubt that the man to write the piece should be Aaron Copland, so there was no doubt that the flutist to play...
...games." She bought a flute and an instruction book and taught herself to play. Upon graduation, having become a Kincaid admirer through recordings, she auditioned for him, and was promptly enrolled as his pupil at the Curtis Institute of Music. Four years later she landed her first job: second flutist with the Kansas City Philharmonic. The conductor, Efrem Kurtz, not only took her with him as first flutist in 1948 when he began the reorganization of the Houston Symphony Orchestra, but in 1955 he also married...
...those days, a solo career for a flutist was a virtual impossibility in the U.S. Most of the leading players were working in orchestras, giving recitals on the side. Shaffer had had enough of the orchestral life. She and Kurtz moved their base of operations to Europe, where despite Aristotle's warning ("The flute is not an instrument which has a good moral effect; it is too exciting"), the flute has remained in high standing. There she established herself among the concert world's handful of top-rank women instrumentalists...
...lighter: a flute is used in two obbligato roles. The one aria had a trio-sonata texture with tenor soloist, flute, and continuo. This form was a special favorite of Bach's for which be wrote some of his best counterpoint. The simplicity and clarity of singer and flutist filled the entire church and maintained the spell throughout the aria...