Autobiography of Kazuo Tokito

My father, Masao Tokito, loved classical music from a young age and apparently hoped to become a professional violinist. My older brother Akimasa played classical guitar and sang well. My second brother, Naohiko, took up the clarinet early on — ours was what you'd call a thoroughly musical family. As for me, Kazuo, in my early childhood I was musically hopeless. I was completely absorbed in plastic models and model airplanes (engine-powered ones) and showed no musical promise at all — so much so that one day my brother Akimasa bought a pair of castanets and told me, "Even you should be able to keep time for my guitar with these."

When I turned 14, an older student from my middle school who lived nearby said to me, "Why don't you play trumpet in the brass band I'm in?" That was finally my entry into music. Once I started, I found it quite interesting and intended to keep at it, but ran into a problem: the school's trumpet was so old and full of holes that it had to be held together with wire just to be playable. I asked my father, "Please buy me a trumpet for Christmas," and he looked deeply troubled and said, "Wouldn't French horn or flute be better than trumpet?" We went to a secondhand shop, and while there was no French horn, there was a flute — and that became my introduction to the flute. I soon began serious study under Shōgo Komatsu-sensei, and finally became a true member of my musical family.

After middle school, I entered Hokusei Gakuen Boys' School. Since there was no brass band there yet, I asked the music teacher, Mr. Sennari, and we formed a nine-member band — I learned to play trumpet, of course, but also trombone, euphonium, sousaphone, clarinet, and more, first teaching myself and then teaching friends. Through Sennari-sensei's introduction, shortly before I turned 17, in the summer of my second year of high school, I went to the Interlochen National Music Camp in Michigan, USA, for eight weeks. What struck me immediately upon arrival was the extraordinarily high level of the students. On the very first day, a combined orchestra of Division I and II students sight-read Sibelius's Symphony No. 2 — and they played it so beautifully that my jaw dropped. (At that rate, I thought, I won't even be able to play my flute properly.) Next came Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol, with every instrument's solo cadenza performed flawlessly — I realized I had truly arrived somewhere serious. At that camp, there were 32 flutists just in the high-school orchestra division alone.

They divided us into two orchestras, but before doing so, they held a "challenge" where students played two at a time competing for seating, and this determined the seating order. As a result, I placed second — but second from the bottom, meaning 31st counting from the top. Back in Sapporo I had been first flute in the HBC Junior Orchestra and had probably been getting a bit full of myself, but this experience knocked all that out of me completely. Still, rather than being discouraged, it seems to have spurred me on.

When I discovered that this camp, outside of summer, became a special arts high school — the Interlochen Arts Academy — I made up my mind about something. I found a metaphorical stone to bite down on and told myself, "I'm staying right here to study music." I planned to have my return airfare refunded and cover tuition and living costs, staying as long as it took — even through February or March if necessary. A fellow camper, a Japanese percussionist named Tsutomu Yamashita, translated for me as I went to the academy office to convey my intentions. The staff were thrown into a panic and immediately called my father in Sapporo to discuss it. My father asked me whether I truly wanted to stay, and with my one-word "Yes, absolutely," the matter was settled. It later turned out that once the school term had begun, the return ticket I'd purchased in Japan couldn't be refunded within the US — but apparently moved by my determination, the school never turned me away, and two years later I graduated from that school.

Let me share one episode from that time. Early in the camp, on a rather hot day, I saw a kid eating pale-colored ice cream in front of an ice cream stand and asked what it was called — he told me "vanilla ice cream." After waiting in a long line, I finally said, "Vanilla ice cream, please" — but it came out as "banana ice cream," and I was told, "We don't have banana, next please," and left without any. What I learned from this: first, that "va" wasn't "ba" but "va" — I hadn't even been able to hear the difference. Second, and more importantly, I couldn't pronounce "L." Japanese "ra" sits between English "ra" and "la," but it's never heard as "la" — always as "ra." I gradually realized that if you touch the tip of your tongue to the back of your upper front teeth before saying ra, ri, ru, re, ro, it sounds like "L." I proposed a notation using small hook marks on the katakana ラリル to distinguish the "L" sound in Japanese dictionaries — half in jest, as a way to help readers' English pronunciation.

Compared to the summer camp, the Academy had far fewer students, but it still had a full-size orchestra. Conducted by Dr. Saul Johnson, we gave weekly subscription concerts, tackling a heavy program including Mahler's Symphony No. 2 and No. 5. On one occasion Aaron Copland himself came to conduct the Academy orchestra; one of his pieces required alto saxophone, and since I was the "jack of all trades," I ended up playing it. By that point I was also playing piccolo without any hesitation. Dr. Johnson recognized my piccolo playing and later invited me to play piccolo with the Green Bay Symphony Orchestra in Wisconsin, which he conducted. The principal flutist there was my Academy teacher, Gary Sigelrenzon.

After graduating from Interlochen Arts Academy, I returned to Sapporo for the first time in two years. I considered attending a Japanese music school for college, but since I'd graduated from an American high school, it made more sense to attend an American conservatory. On the recommendation of teachers from the Academy, I sent an audition tape to Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio. Happily, I was accepted with a scholarship, so I ended up going back to the US once again.

At Oberlin, I studied flute with Robert Willoughby. He was a man of remarkable intellect who taught me about the logic and structure of music, and how to apply and express that understanding in performance. Both my grandfather and grandmother had moved from Kagoshima to Hokkaido, so perhaps because of the "Satsuma samurai blood" running through me, my music when I first arrived at Oberlin was driven largely by raw emotion — rough and unrefined, I suppose. At first I strongly resisted my teacher's approach. Young as I was, I thought: "Music isn't made of logic — it's built from soul, heart, and emotion. Are you trying to crush that with theory?!" But then it suddenly struck me: "With this kind of resistant attitude, I won't be able to learn anything over the next four years." So I pictured a box in my mind of a modest size (the kind a pair of shoes comes in), put my emotions inside it, and tucked it away on a shelf.

After that, everything my teacher taught sank in smoothly and became second nature. A few years later, in nearby Cleveland, I had the chance to hear a wonderful shakuhachi performance by Tatsuya Yokoyama. On the cover of that concert's program, written in beautiful calligraphy, were the words "ichi-on mushin" ("one note, no-mind"). Yokoyama's performance was exactly that, and it moved me deeply. It struck me then that Japanese music — shakuhachi music especially — allows one to lose oneself completely in a single note, whereas Western classical music might be described as "sen-on tekiri" (a thousand notes, all fitting perfectly) — where even a thousand or fifty thousand notes are all logically justified.

I studied at Oberlin from 1968 to 1972. At the time, the Conservatory was deeply engaged in the study and performance of contemporary music — from the twelve-tone music of Schoenberg and Berg to figures like Stockhausen and Xenakis. Exposed to this "atonal music," I began thinking about many things, which I'd like to write about here. I divided my thinking into two broad areas. One was discovering the structure of atonal music itself. The other was reexamining the true nature of "tonal music" — encompassing the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods. It was rather like only truly seeing your hometown once you've left it. Let me start with the second question.

Among Hindemith's teachings is an observation about the relationship — the pull — that exists between two notes, based on the interval between them. The interval where this pull is most clearly felt is the perfect fourth and fifth. With a perfect fourth, the upper note pulls more strongly; with a perfect fifth, the lower note pulls more strongly. This is rooted in the physics of sound — the structure of overtones. For instance, if low C is the fundamental, twice its frequency gives the C an octave up, three times gives the G above that, and four times gives C two octaves up. This G sits between the tonic C's, pulled toward the C a fourth above and also drawn to the C a fifth below. Add harmony, and this pull becomes even clearer: in C major, the dominant chord G–B–D is pulled toward, and inevitably resolves to, the tonic chord C–E–G. I came to understand this as "the gravity of sound."

Today, space shuttles and the world of space travel are commonplace, and I think music resembles this quite closely. Tonal music, which relies on a tonic center and this gravitational pull of sound, is much like living on Earth's surface, governed by gravity. Atonal music, by contrast, is like the near-weightlessness experienced aboard a space shuttle. (I say "near" because even while floating freely inside the shuttle, the shuttle itself still orbits the Earth under its gravitational pull. Likewise, no matter how "atonal" music claims to be, as long as it uses sounds created by vibrations in air, it can never fully escape the pull of overtones. I think this is a very apt parallel.) But the human mind has its limits, and without conscious effort, we often fail to notice things we've simply grown used to.

Recently, in a lesson, I picked up a nearby chair, tilted it about 45 degrees balanced on two legs, and asked a student, "If I let go, which way will this chair fall?" Before the student even had time to think "oh no, here he goes again with something odd," they'd carefully consider left or right and answer. What happens here is this: normally, a student looking at an ordinary chair feels nothing particular about it — but tilting it makes them consciously aware of the pull of Earth's gravity. The same thing happens in music. Unless we consciously heighten our awareness, we miss the gravitational pull of sound entirely. Once you can perceive this pull, you begin to understand the destination of a melody, the momentum driving toward it, and the emotional movement that arises from it.

Now, back to the first question — uncovering the structure of atonal music itself. As I touched on earlier, analyzing this near-weightless music reveals a sound arrangement in which gravitational pull is deliberately hard to feel. The twelve-tone system is a good example: if all twelve semitones are used equally, none of them can easily become a tonal center. Composers avoided the intervals with the strongest pull — perfect fourths and fifths — and instead favored minor seconds, major sevenths, diminished fifths, and similar low-pull intervals, lining up dissonant harmonies. This raises the question: if you strip music of its gravitational pull, what's left? At the time, "experimental music" was in vogue, so every conceivable style existed. A few examples: music with no form; music with no tonic and no consonance; music with no melody; music with no rhythm.

Taking this to its logical extreme, John Cage wrote a piece called "4′33″," in which a performer — say, a pianist — sits at the piano and plays not a single note for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. If you strip away the elements of music one by one, is this where you inevitably arrive? Of course, Cage himself was interested, at that moment, in every sound occurring within the concert hall.

In this way, once you strip away all the elements of music, what remains is a space of time. Within that space, you can discover the "sculptures" formed by the shapes and groupings of sounds. Then you begin to see the relationships and balance among those sculptures. It seems that in any well-crafted piece, regardless of style, there is a beautiful sense of balance. Looking at the great classical composers — Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and others — through this lens, I discovered their works achieve perfect balance.

That reminds me — around my senior year, I finally took out that box I'd tucked away on the shelf, blew off the dust, and opened it up. My heart inside was still very much alive and well. I took it out and placed it into a new home — not the old makeshift shack, but a proper structure with a real foundation (though still under construction) — and it was overjoyed.

Well then — in 1972 I graduated from Oberlin College and came home to Sapporo after four years away. Right about then I heard that a seat was opening up in the flute section of the Sapporo Symphony, so I took my father's business card and promptly requested a meeting with the orchestra's general manager. He did agree to see me, but — maybe because I had no letter of introduction from someone like Masao Yoshida or Ririko Hayashi, or maybe because I'd studied at an American school rather than in Germany or France — there was no talk of an audition at all. I was, in effect, turned away at the door. So it became a case of "I'd better find some sort of job or nobody's going to give me a bride," and through the introduction of a music teacher in Sapporo I went to work for Zen-On. (Much later, someone told me that at a gathering of flute players somewhere in Tokyo people had been gossiping, "What? A Zen-On employee got into the Philadelphia Orchestra? No way!" — which I found rather gratifying.)

Over the next few years all sorts of things happened, but let me get back to the thread of my musical life. Around 1975 I decided to leave Zen-On and go to graduate school in the United States. I sent cassette recordings to several universities and got favorable answers from two. One was the University of Michigan, which admitted me to a doctoral program with a scholarship and living expenses. The other was Indiana University, which admitted me but explained that it was school policy that anyone who auditioned by tape was ineligible for financial aid. So I phoned Mr. Willoughby and said, "I got into Indiana too, but Michigan took me on the best possible terms — pretty impressive, no?" He replied, "If Michigan were offering you a professorship, then fine, go. But as you are now, you should be studying with Mr. Pellerite at Indiana." And so I went to Indiana. Financially my attitude seems to have been, "Ah well, things'll work out somehow."

And they did. First, my wife Mariko, a microbiologist (oh — right, I'd quietly gotten married back in the Zen-On days), found work as an assistant in a lab in Indiana's microbiology department. Then, as soon as we arrived, I arranged lessons with Professor Pellerite, and a few days after scraping the bottom of our savings to pay the tuition for enrollment, he called me in. It turned out that more students than expected wanted flute as a secondary instrument that year, and he asked whether I'd teach five or six of them as a teaching assistant. Which meant my tuition was refunded — and I got a little pocket money besides. Things worked out somehow indeed.

Mr. Pellerite was an extremely demanding teacher, always asking for a higher standard and teaching in a way that made students find the path there for themselves. Another marvelous thing was the orchestral repertoire class he had set up, with groups of four or five students from each year. He told me, though, that since my training wasn't there yet I should join the third-year class rather than the graduate one. On the first day I showed up to find four girls of about twenty (and me already a 27-year-old geezer!), with nothing but music stands in front of us — no parts out yet. Then the professor said, "Let's review last year. Mary, the passage from the last movement of Prokofiev's Classical Symphony. Laura, the solo from Ravel's *Daphnis and Chloé*..." — and each of these girls played it from memory, virtually flawlessly. I'd been left slack-jawed before in my life, but this time I thought my lower jaw had dropped into my lap. What he was getting at, essentially, was this: for an orchestral audition, you have to train yourself so that your best comes out within a span of about seven minutes.

And so began Kazuo's period of ferocious practice.

At Indiana I took composition as a secondary subject. As a memento of that, let me share part of my piece for flute and piano, "Amber," which won first prize and $300 in the school's composition competition at the time. This is a copy of the original manuscript. Whatever its merits, the thinking I had begun at Oberlin — the gravity of sound, the balance among those sculptures in time — is in every bar of it.

Two years later I took my first orchestral audition. At that point the only flute and piccolo openings listed in the musicians' union job column were two: an orchestra in Mexico and the Vancouver Symphony in Canada. I sent a letter of application to the Mexican one as well, but never received a word back. The Vancouver opening was for piccolo and assistant first flute — piccolo again, the instrument Dr. Johnson had first put in my hands up in Green Bay — and the preliminary auditions were held in several Canadian cities, so I went to Toronto, the closest to Indiana University. On a truly bitter winter night I arrived at my Toronto hotel, opened the piccolo case to practice right away — and found a crack about two centimeters long in the headjoint. My teacher had told me this would be good experience for me, and I'd paid the steep travel costs out of an already thin wallet, so I wondered whether this was a message from fate. But perhaps because of it I went into the audition in a relatively clear, unburdened state of mind. In the end they asked me to come to Vancouver for a second audition, with the orchestra covering the travel. I think that, too, was thanks to Mr. Pellerite's rigorous training.

A few months later I went out to Vancouver for the audition, ended up making it all the way through the finals, and at twenty-nine my professional life in music finally began. That was when I first met the music director, Kazuyoshi Akiyama, with whom I would spend four wonderful years. After the audition I called Mariko and asked, "It's a lovely place — seagulls flying right through the middle of town. Will you come live here?"

Vancouver's concert hall was called the Orpheum, originally a first-class movie palace converted into a concert venue, and it was gorgeous. The acoustics were tremendously live; people said that if you dropped a single pin on stage you could hear it in the back row. On top of that, the Vancouver Symphony's pitch ran a little high, around A=443, so I couldn't use the Roy Seaman piccolo I owned; instead I played a Yamaha headjoint that I had recut myself for that hall. I consider it a great honor to have played so many concerts there under Mr. Akiyama. Looking back now, having worked with a great many conductors including some of the very first rank, I realize just how superb his baton technique was.

Now, let's consider the question: what is the piccolo within an orchestra? According to *Orchestras Are Wonderful*, a book by Daisuke Mogi, oboist of the NHK Symphony, it's "the piccolo — that truly perilous job." Whatever you play, there's not much hiding. But looked at another way: just as the painter Van Gogh sometimes outlined buildings and objects in strong black, making his pictures leap into focus, I think the piccolo also serves to outline the music. At the same time, when things are going reasonably well the audience may barely notice you're there. Not the unsung strong man beneath the floorboards — the strong man up in the attic. Still, since the slightest slip makes you the center of attention, it may well be a perilous instrument after all. So let me offer my own thinking on the matter.

Another of Vancouver's pleasures was the food. The sushi above all was superb. Before that, of course, there had been zero Japanese food at Interlochen; at Oberlin, whatever Sapporo Ichiban instant ramen I could lay hands on was a treasure; at Indiana there wasn't a single Japanese restaurant. So for a fellow like that to land in Vancouver felt like arriving in heaven. Besides "Koji," the sushi place we frequented, there was all manner of it. Not content merely to eat, I tracked down three or four shops where the first-generation Japanese immigrants had been fishermen and their second-generation sons now ran fish markets. Every Wednesday, my day off, I'd make the rounds buying sushi ingredients, invite friends who were equally sushi-mad, and hold sushi parties where I formed the nigiri by imitation. I even practiced with a model piece of sushi, rolling it around in my hand, squaring off both ends and shaping it quickly.

And so, before playing a perilous passage on the perilous piccolo, here is what I tell myself: "Worrying about it won't do me one bit of good. If I flub it and get fired, I'll just go apprentice myself at some sushi shop." Do that, and — surprisingly — the heart doesn't pound at all.

In my fourth year (1980) living in peaceful Vancouver, where the cherry blossoms go on blooming for months in spring, I got a phone call from Mr. Kent Terry. Mr. Terry had taught flute once during a summer session while I was at Indiana, standing in for Professor Pellerite; he had spent many years as second flute in the Philadelphia Orchestra before retiring. He had remembered me, and the reason for his call was this: the Philadelphia Orchestra’s piccolo player, Mr. John Krell, had suddenly decided to retire, and there would be an audition for the vacancy in a month — I should absolutely come and take it. As it turned out, that single phone call became a fascinating turning point of fate. The reason is that the Canadian postal service happened to be on strike at the time, and the notice of the vacancy reached Vancouver a week after I had already come home from the audition.

Of course I understood perfectly well what a magnificent orchestra the Philadelphia was, but it was on a different order of magnitude altogether — and in Vancouver my studio had grown, I had also become principal flute of the CBC radio orchestra, and I was playing under the superb Kazuyoshi Akiyama. I was living a quite happy life. Had I merely seen the notice of the Philadelphia vacancy, I might well not have gone to the audition at all. But there was Mr. Terry’s personal request, and there was the chance to meet Mr. Krell, a piccolo player I had long admired, and the principal flute Mr. Murray Panitz — and the thought that these musicians might hear at least a little of my playing was reason enough to go. So I set off. The presumptuous idea of actually joining the Philadelphia Orchestra never crossed my mind, not for an instant. What’s more, the Curtis Institute, so closely connected with the orchestra, was said to have something like a “Curtis manner” about it — to me, another world entirely.

There’s a rather amusing memory attached to this. To take the audition I had to request a week’s leave from the Vancouver Symphony, which meant I had to see Mr. Akiyama and get his permission. I explained: “Such and such is the situation, and I owe Mr. Terry this much, so I’ll just go and have a look.” Mr. Akiyama said, “Yes, understood. Please go. But what will you do if you win?” After a brief silence I said, fortissimo, “Not a chance!” — and Mr. Akiyama immediately replied, “Quite so.”

The required repertoire for the audition was only about six of the well-known orchestral excerpts, and these were used only in the first round. In the second round there was handwritten music set out: three whole notes on G, one in each octave, each with a crescendo and diminuendo beneath it; and a two-octave G major scale in quarter notes, likewise with crescendo and diminuendo. The idea was to test basic control of the piccolo. After that came several sight-reading items — some little-known orchestral excerpts, some things at an extraordinary pianissimo, and, notated in treble clef, a movement from Bach’s cello suites. Since the prepared excerpts might well have been learned and drilled with some teacher or other, this was a way of testing how far the player could create music by his own powers.

I had been told I would also be asked to play flute, so I went out carrying it — only to be told, “There’s no need to play the flute. The piccolo position is yours.” I was astonished. Then the great Mr. Murray Panitz opened with, “And here I was hoping to pick a girl this time,” at which the whole panel burst out laughing. Next came the question, “By the way, what make of flute do you play?” To explain my answer I need to back up a little: around the second round someone had asked, “Just what make of piccolo are you playing?” and when I answered “Yamaha,” everyone snickered — there was a distinct air of “well, that explains it.” So when I was asked about my flute, I played the fool a bit and answered, “A Datsun.” That got a huge laugh out of everyone, the music director Mr. Riccardo Muti included.

Something I only understood later: whereas Vancouver’s concert hall, the Orpheum, was tremendously resonant, Philadelphia’s hall, the Academy of Music, had almost no resonance at all. It was built along the lines of the famous La Scala in Milan, originally intended for opera, with cloth lining the rear seating areas and so on. So the Yamaha piccolo, which I had cut for the Orpheum around a fine, delicate sensation of sound, was somewhat inadequate. I immediately acquired a Zentner piccolo made by Roy Seaman and cut the headjoint so it could produce a broad, powerful sound suited to the Academy while still allowing fine nuance. The reason Roy Seaman’s were good for this is that the embouchure hole on his headjoints is simply drilled straight through, with no undercutting and no finishing of the top edge at all — so you can cut it exactly as you like.

What I felt at my first Philadelphia Orchestra rehearsal, sitting inside the live Philadelphia sound for the first time, was: “Whoa — this is monstrous!” I apologize for putting it this way, but the sound I had grown used to in Vancouver had been rather like an old monaural record, and arriving in Philadelphia it suddenly sounded like hi-fi stereo. What I mean is that even the players at the very back of the second violins, and behind them, were immersed in the music and playing for all they were worth. Before, even at a fortissimo climax, it had been a matter of “yes, right here, please dig in more — go on, give it everything, please”; here it was “ah, wait a moment, not yet — please don’t get that excited just yet, please.” That is the difference.

This first rehearsal was taken by Mr. Eugene Ormandy, who after more than forty years as music director had become conductor laureate. The rehearsal was fairly broad-brush and finished early, and I had some misgivings as to whether tonight’s concert would really be all right — but once we began playing that evening, not only every woodwind and brass player but every string section as well fulfilled its musical role as one body, shaping the phrasing with fine sensitivity and bold gesture. I was thoroughly impressed. I had landed somewhere quite extraordinary, and I sat on stage grinning at my own luck, trying not to let it show too much on my face. Thinking about it further — isn’t it precisely thanks to the Academy’s lack of resonance that each individual player develops a broad, mellow, powerfully carrying sound? It became my fate to pursue and train toward that goal without pause.

There were four new members that year, including me and the associate principal flute, Mr. David Cramer. Let me include here the photograph from when our group went to pay respects to the conductor laureate, Mr. Ormandy. When I was introduced as “this is Kaz, the piccolo,” Mr. Ormandy looked at me with a smile and moved his palm flat above his own head, as if to gesture, you’re small like me — good, good. This too I learned only later: Mr. Ormandy apparently wasn’t very fond of tall people, so being a shorty, I was taken to right away.

Now, when Mr. Riccardo Muti’s rehearsals began, the first thing that struck me as remarkable was that Mr. Muti, still only forty, had the complete authority of a commander in front of orchestra members who were mostly in their fifties and sixties. It was of course the authority that emerges from having studied the score exhaustively as a conductor and understanding the character and shape of the piece perfectly. Let me illustrate with one entertaining example. During a rehearsal, when Mr. Muti stopped conducting in order to make some comment, the orchestra trailed off raggedly, straggling to a halt. Mr. Muti waited quietly and fixedly through this, then let a further pause elapse before making his comment — and there was something in his manner that made a good many members think, “ah, that was perhaps a bit unwise.” The next time he stopped, far fewer people straggled, and Mr. Muti fixed them with that piercing glare. Those on the receiving end shrank to about a fifth of their size. The third time he stopped, the orchestra came to a dead, silent halt. This is something only the strong charisma of the boss can accomplish.

Riccardo Muti’s music was full of energy and had the feel of an Italian razor blade. Let me give another example here.

The example is a piccolo passage from Giuseppe Verdi’s overture to La forza del destino. Ordinarily one might read it as [mimetic syllables in the original — untranslatable into English, sic], but in the Italian manner you feel the bar in two beats and play it at a slightly quicker tempo, like [mimetic syllables in the original — untranslatable into English, sic]. Well? Did you feel the cut of the razor? In that fashion, for the next ten years, I was privileged to take part in performances that were wonderful and, like an Italian storm, ferocious.

The music director for the following ten years was Mr. Wolfgang Sawallisch. He is our conductor laureate even now, but since his health is not at its best he cannot travel far, and regrettably I have not seen him these past few years. Mr. Sawallisch was a maestro who made music in a way entirely different from Mr. Muti — it can fairly be called the German method. He would grasp the shape of the whole structure of a piece perfectly, then build it up phrase by phrase, attending to each with a warm heart and ample care. This unfolded in an infinitely deep way that gave both us performers and the audience a satisfaction reaching to the bottom of the heart. At every rehearsal and concert I was profoundly impressed, and I learned a great deal. Take, for instance, the last movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, the “Pastoral,” under Mr. Sawallisch: several hill-like climaxes arrive, and he would balance them properly so that when the final mountainous wave came — though he was producing nothing beyond an ordinary fortissimo — one was moved almost to tears. The piccolo appears only in the storm scene preceding that movement, so afterward I could sit at my seat in the middle of the stage and savor it fully. I do not believe there has ever been anyone, before or since, who could shape the arch of the music so magnificently and move the human heart as he did.

Next time, let me introduce something of the method I have worked out over many years of teaching flute and piccolo

Kazuo Tokito

June 20th, 2010