This is Phillppe Gaubert’s Flute!
One afternoon when I was teaching the virtues of the Taffanel and Gaubert notebooks in Neuilly-sur-Seine, my student and friend, Aurelie-Poiret, enters the classroom with a Louis Lot flute under her arm and says to me, placing the instrument on the piano:
When I first discovered the instrument I was swept away by a strong emotion and through time, Aurelie Poiret has allowed me entrance into Philippe Gaubert’s world, guided by a mutual trust for which I thank her deeply.
The door opens for me through one of the only living witnesses to a large part of the life of Philippe Gaubert, Yvette Poire-Gaubert, Philippe Gaubert’s daughter-in-law. Madame Poire-Gaubert became part of the master’s family at an early age thanks to a precocious love story with the great Gaumont film producer, Alain Poire. Having contributed heavily to the great French artistic tradition, she went on to rub elbows with the great artists of that time. Philippe Gaubert, the great flutist, teacher, composer among the great talents, also director of the Opera de Paris in the 1930’s and conductor of the orchestra, was keeping company with Ravel, Debussy, Enesco, Dukas, Honegger, or Valery, Giraudoux, Lifar, just to name a few…
Madame Poire-Gaubert, the only person with the rights to Philippe Gaubert’s works today, allows me a rare interview, evoking the career, the personality, the family, the relationships and even the daily life of Philippe Gaubert.
(Part of the interview)
ND: Hello, Yvette Poire-Gaubert and thank you for opening the door to your memories of not only a great flutist, but also a great artist and great man, Philippe Gaubert. How did you come to be close to him?
YP: I knew Philippe Gaubert in 1932 when I was 14 and Alain Poire, my future husband was 16. Philippe Gaubert had remarried Madeleine, Alain’s mother; Philippe Gaubert raised and loved him as if he were his own. We were considered a couple to be engaged at a later time, and I was received with open arms into his family. They called us the little Gauberts!
ND: You wrote a book not long ago dedicated to Philippe Gaubert. Can you tell us a little about it?
YP: I had wanted to write this book for 25 years and then, I gave myself one year to write it but 25 passed before it was done!...the time of a rich and tumultuous life. I had married Alain Poire who was producing about 6 films a year. At the time of Madeleine’s death, I inherited numerous documents which, of course, were about his flute. There was a great sorting of his records at the house and thanks to that and my memories, I was able to write my book.
ND: Philippe Gaubert’s career is amazing.
YP: Yes! It’s really a fairy tale. His professional life was a success thanks to a lot of hard work combined with his many talents and extraordinary gifts. His start is really worthy of a fiction story. First, we have to talk a bit about his father, Baptiste Gaubert, who must have had a strong personality himself: coming from a fairly poor peasant family around Cahors, an uneducated man, he had an innate gift for music that he, himself, was unable to develop. At the age of 12, instead of bringing back the money he made from selling the products they had raised on the farm, he brought back a violin! His parents immediately broke it over his back.....
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