Daniel Pailthorpe, principal flute in the BBC Symphony Orchestra
By Robert Bigio
Daniel Pailthorpe was captivated by the sound of
the flute at the age of six when he heard his
parents’ recording of Jean-Pierre Rampal. He
demanded to learn to play, was taken for a lesson
and was told he had to wait for two years because
he didn’t yet have enough teeth. It would be an
understatement to say he was disappointed. ‘I
found it hard to forgive the teacher,’ he said, ‘until
last year when I discovered that I am now playing
on what was once her flute.’ Teacher or no, he
taught himself to play, helped by an older boy at
his prep school, using A Tune a Day. He did receive
some good early musical training after joining the
local church choir, at St. Mary’s, Harrow-on-the-
Hill (and in fact was once runner-up in the
Choirboy of the Year competition).
At the age of eleven Daniel attended the Royal
Academy of Music as a Junior Exhibitioner, where
he had flute lessons with Derek Honner. He admits
to having had sporadic practice habits which did
wonders for his sight-reading ability in his lessons
(and he says he sincerely hopes Derek Honner isn’t
reading this). At the age of twelve Daniel attended
Harrow School, which might have had great
success in turning out prime ministers but was, as
Daniel remembers it at the time, a place where
philistinism reigned. Junior Academy was a life-
saver for him, as was getting into the National
Youth Orchestra the following year. ‘The NYO was
a turning point,’ he remembers. ‘I shall never forget
the overwhelming thrill of experiencing, from the
eighth flute chair, Don Juan at the first rehearsal.’ Nor, as a pupil at a school for boys, will he forget the
presence in the NYO of those otherwise most rare creatures in his life: girls. Daniel became principal
flute in the NYO at the age of seventeen.
Before taking up a place at Cambridge, Daniel spent a year in Paris studying with Gaston Crunelle,
who had been professor of flute at the Paris Conservatoire. Crunelle was the dedicatee of the
Dutilleux Sonatine and of Messiaen’s Le merle noir and was, as Daniel remembers him, an incredible
link with the past. He also remembers having to play his Taffanel and Gaubert exercises in a haze of
blue smoke from M. le professeur’s never-extinguished Gauloises. Paris was Daniel’s first taste of
freedom and self-sufficiency. Busking proved rather lucrative, but his oh-so-exclusive school had
failed to explain to him the basics of a balanced diet, and the delights of the particularly fine local
patisserie proved so difficult to resist that he managed to contract a mild form of scurvy.
He survived and went to Clare College, Cambridge from 1984 to 1987, where he read music. At the
end of his first term he joined the college’s very fine choir, where he discovered he could sight-read
and could sing very low bass notes, ‘Even without even the aid of a hangover’, as he puts it. The choir
was directed by the brilliant and uncompromising Timothy Brown, who reawakened Daniel’s love of
English church music, largely abandoned since his voice broke. Daniel strongly recommends any
would-be orchestral musician to join a choir, where so much can be learned about blending and
voicing (quite apart from the wonderful repertoire). Guest conductors of the Clare College choir
included Roger Norrington (who directed some unforgettable
performance of the music of Schütz) and John Rutter,
whose Cambridge Singers Daniel later joined. A happy
consequence of joining that choir was that John Rutter
wrote some flute arrangements for Daniel to perform with
the choir, and a highlight of his early professional career
was performing Rutter’s Skylark in Carnegie Hall, with solo
parts for himself and for the pianist Wayne Marshall.
During his time at Cambridge, Daniel’s flute playing and
his singing were of equal importance to him. His two flute
lessons a term with Peter Lloyd kept his technique ticking
over, and in addition to his singing he became conductor of
the Cambridge University Gilbert & Sullivan Society. In
1986 he joined the European Community Youth Orchestra,
and the following year he did post-graduate study at the
Royal Academy of Music with William Bennett. During this
post-graduate year in London, Daniel accepted the
occasional professional singing engagement and at one
stage considered singing as a career. However, a Countess
of Munster Scholarship awarded in 1988 allowed him to do
six months’ further study in America with Geoffrey Gilbert.
‘I was amazed,’ he remembers, ‘not only by his innate
teaching ability (like a ‘flute doctor’ who could diagnose
and cure any ailment), but also by his dazzling technique.
At the age of seventy-four he had the fingers of a twenty-
year-old and could outplay any of us on his famous top D
scale exercises.’ When Geoffrey Gilbert’s health began to
fail (he died later that year), Daniel continued his studies
with Thomas Nyfenger, a man described by Daniel as an
eccentric genius.
In 1990 Daniel joined the orchestra of the English National
Opera as co-principal flute. Ten years later he joined the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a similar
position. A couple of years before he had been invited by Richard Hickox to play in the St. Endellion
Festival in Cornwall. The oboist in the orchestra was an American named Emily, who arrived at the
first rehearsal jetlagged, extremely wet from the British weather and in not the best of temper. Daniel
remembers a vision of loveliness arriving in the rehearsal hall. Emily remembers thinking, ‘So who is
this man playing a strange wooden flute?’ She clearly decided that her first impression was not the
correct one, because Daniel and Emily Pailthorpe have, as the fairy tales say, been living happily ever
after and have produced three children. They founded Conchord, a mixed chamber ensemble which
Daniel also directs as an ensemble for concertos. Conchord have made many recordings, including
one of George Crumb’s The Voice of the Whale (Vox Balaenae) and one of Bach concertos, which was
Classic FM’s CD of the Month in 2006. Daniel is currently working on a reconstruction of Mozart’s
‘lost’ flute version of the Sinfonia concertante K.297b. In 2007 he returned to the National Youth
Orchestra, this time as coach of the flute section. Daniel is also a frequent guest principal with the
Chamber Orchestra of Europe.
Daniel Paithorpe performs on a wooden flute by Rudall Carte with a headjoint by Robert Bigio.
www.conchord.co.uk
Discography:
Bach Suite in B minor. CHRCD014 www.champshillrecords.co.uk
Duruflé and Pierné chamber works. CHRCD010
Crumb: Vox Balaenae. BBM1076 www.sanctuaryclassics.com
Bach Flute works. CHRCD031
Also:
Poulenc Sonata and Sextet ASVCD, to be reissued on CHR
,
Robert Bigio flute pages
Articles on the flute
Daniel Pailthorpe
Photograph by Robert Bigio
Daniel Pailthorpe
Photograph by S.L. Chai
Bach: Suite in B minor (Polonaise, Menuet and Badinerie) from Bach Flute works.
Daniel Pailthorpe, flute; London Conchord Ensemble (Mia Cooper and Maya Koch,
violins; Douglas Paterson, viola; Bridget MacRae, cello; Enno Senft, double bass).
Champs Hill Records CHRCD031.