Geoffrey Gilbert

Geoffrey Winzer Gilbert (28 May 1914 – 1989) was an English flautist, who was a leading influence on British flute-playing, introducing a more flexible style, based on French techniques, with metal instruments replacing the traditional wood. He was a prominent member of five British symphony orchestras between 1930 and 1961, and in 1948 he founded a chamber ensemble of leading wind players.

After the Second World War Gilbert combined his playing career with teaching, holding appointments at music colleges in London, Manchester, and finally in Florida.

Life and career

Early years Gilbert was born in Liverpool, England, the son of Ernest Gilbert, an oboist, and his wife Jessie, née Thomas, a teacher. At the age of fourteen he won scholarships to Liverpool College of Music and the Royal Manchester College of Music (RMCM), and joined the Hallé and the Liverpool Philharmonic orchestras two years later. In 1933 Gilbert joined Sir Thomas Beecham's London Philharmonic Orchestra; he was its principal flautist at the age of nineteen. According to The Times, "his subsequent influence on other British flautists was enormous, and the wooden flute was quickly superseded". and managed to play in some concerts. He rejoined the London Philharmonic after the war (though Beecham was no longer its conductor), and became a teacher at the Guildhall School of Music and Trinity College of Music, London. He rejoined Beecham, now with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, in 1957. In 1960 Eugene Ormandy unsuccessfully sought to appoint Gilbert to the principal flute position in the Philadelphia Orchestra; Beecham died in 1961 and Gilbert concluded, "after the loss of Sir Thomas from the musical world I no longer felt that I wanted to be a regular member of a symphony orchestra except perhaps an odd performance as a guest artist"; he never again played regularly with any other orchestra though he was the guest principal with the London Symphony Orchestra on occasion.

Gilbert was the father of the television scriptwriter, director and producer John Selwyn Gilbert, who wrote: My father was a great player and "a rare teacher" as William Bennett wrote in an obituary. Sir James Galway also pays tribute to him in his autobiography. He inspired more than one generation of British flute players and many of the leading players in British orchestras studied with him or with his pupils. A studio at the Guildhall School of Music is dedicated to his memory and Angeleita Floyd's book about him and his methods, published in 1990, is still available. He was a modest, gentle and dignified man whose only faults were his heavy smoking and his total inability to cook. My mother tolerated the first and compensated splendidly for the second. Her part in his achievement should never be underestimated.

Gilbert died in DeLand, Florida, at the age of 74. He left a widow, a son and a daughter.

Recordings Among the recordings on which Gilbert plays are pre-war LPO sets under Beecham, including a series of Mozart symphonies, recorded across several years beginning in 1934, and, with Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic, symphonies by Haydn and Schubert, Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben, works by Delius, and many French pieces, including Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune with its prominent opening flute solo. With Fritz Reiner and the RPO Gilbert recorded Brahms's Fourth Symphony and with Rafael Kubelík and the RPO, Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra.