# What is with the flute player in the NY Phil under LB?



## Olias (Nov 18, 2010)

I love many recordings of Bernstein and the NY Philharmonic that were released on Sony. The energy, interpretation, historical significance, all of it.....

.....except the flute player.

I don't even know his name, and he obviously is well educated and talented.....

.....but that VIBRATO. OMG, that VIBRATO is so bloody annoying! It's so wide and fast it's like the music equivalent of an EKG during an anxiety attack.

I first noticed it listening to Shostakovich 5th near the end of the 1st movement when the horn and flute have a duet, but there are many other examples.

It can't be just me. I've never heard a musician from a major symphony orchestra play in a way that annoys me so much. Were there not music critics commenting on this at the time, or was it something no one really minded?


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

Olias said:


> I love many recordings of Bernstein and the NY Philharmonic that were released on Sony. The energy, interpretation, historical significance, all of it.....
> 
> .....except the flute player.
> 
> ...


John Wummer - great player, had a long, illustrious career...he was the original principal flute in NBCSO under Toscanini [1937]...in 1942 he became principal with NYPO, a position which he held until 1965....Julius Baker was his successor...

The big vibrato was very much in vogue when he began his career...other great musicians played with the same style - Walter Guetter [bssn], Wm. Polisi [bssn] to name just a couple....that was the style that was taught...by the 60s, this had moderated quite a bit...vibrato is still taught and used widely, but not as pronounced as the previous generation.


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## Olias (Nov 18, 2010)

Heck148 said:


> John Wummer - great player, had a long, illustrious career...he was the original principal flute in NBCSO under Toscanini [1937]...in 1942 he became principal with NYPO, a position which he held until 1965....Julius Baker was his successor...
> 
> The big vibrato was very much in vogue when he began his career...other great musicians played with the same style - Walter Guetter [bssn], Wm. Polisi [bssn] to name just a couple....that was the style that was taught...by the 60s, this had moderated quite a bit...vibrato is still taught and used widely, but not as pronounced as the previous generation.


Well I'm glad he was trying to sound that way, and if it was in vogue at the time then mission accomplished. Still makes my skin crawl.


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

Olias said:


> Well I'm glad he was trying to sound that way, and if it was in vogue at the time then mission accomplished. Still makes my skin crawl.


Vibrato is applied differently in various parts of the world....the Czech and Russian horn players used vibrato extensively....some clarinet players, too...fine players, really great....it takes some getting used to....


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## Xenophiliu (Jan 2, 2022)

Heck148 said:


> John Wummer - great player, had a long, illustrious career...he was the original principal flute in NBCSO under Toscanini [1937]...in 1942 he became principal with NYPO, a position which he held until 1965.
> 
> The big vibrato was very much in vogue when he began his career.


He's the one! I grew up with Bernstein's NY recording of Debussy's _Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun_ and I always had trouble listening to other renditions because of Wummer's singular flute sound, one that I had always associated with that work. It is still a preference, probably for that reason.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Wummer was taught by Georges Barrère, who played in the premiere of Debussy's _Prélude à l'Aprés-midi d'un faune_ in December 1894 and was noted for a naturally produced rapid bird-like vibrato. Barrère, however, discouraged excessive vibrato of any kind. According to Barrère, "For three hundred years flutists tried to play in tune. Then they gave up and invented vibrato. For the fifty years I've been tooting my instrument, my daily care was to avoid vibrato. Today, to declare that expression might sometimes be achieved just by the absence of vibrato, would, in most quarters, only earn an incredulous frown. Isn't it still possible to express beauty by pure lines, such as we find in ancient Greek marbles?" Wummer was the last of the fast vibrato school, though his vibrato slowed down in later years.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Longtime BSO principal jlute Doriot Anthony Dwyer had a reasonably wide vibrato. Her performance of the big flute variation in the Brahms Fourth used to drive a friend of mine crazy.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Yeah, he's kind of like the trumpeter in this:




(what's the close-up on the trumpet bell in the beginning for anyway?)


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