Alain Marion
A couple of weeks ago, I posted about what it means to play avec fantaisie (with fantasy). One of the contemporary flutists who most exemplified this style of performance and thinking about music to me was Alain Marion, a wonderful soloist and inspirational Professor of Flute at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris who suffered an untimely death at the age of 59 in 1998.
M. Marion played a broad repertoire, including Bach (also the name of his dog, as some of my fellow former students of the Académie Internationale d’été de Nice will remember), Mozart, and atonal contemporary music. And in all styles, his interpretations were excellent, insightful, and well worth listening to. But I think it was in the French late 19th- and early 20th-century and related styles that he was best, and that was precisely because of his old-school approach to this music. Listen to how spontaneously and coloristically he performs Georges Enesco’s Cantabile et Presto in this recording. Similarly, listen to how beautiful he makes the Romance in Db Major by Camille Saint-Saëns.
M. Marion had a thorough understanding of musical structure and insisted on clarity in performance, but mere clarity was not sufficient to him. Spontaneity was necessary to bring music to life – especially romantic and post-romantic music.
I studied with M. Marion for two summers at 2-week master class programs in Nice. It is no exaggeration to say that, as good as my own lessons were, I learned as much or, probably, more by auditing other students’ lessons.
One such lesson that I recall was for a young English woman, who was playing the “Idylle” from the Suite de Trois Morceaux by Benjamin Godard. In my experience to that date, I had heard only rather perfunctory performances of the piece and therefore found it uninteresting. However, the English woman played very well, and M. Marion complimented her, saying that she had a great tone and played with very good technique – which wasn’t surprising because her regular teacher was William Bennett, another of my heroes.
M. Marion followed up, however, by asking her “Do you know what means Idylle?” She had to admit she did not, whereupon he replied “Idylle is a love song” and motioned the class accompanist to play with him. He played about 2/3 of the movement in a very spontaneous and compelling way, then put his flute down and said “I’ve told you my love story; now, you tell me yours.” And she did. And it was not the same as his but was her playing, only better.
I have no recording of the Idylle by M. Marion to present to you, but on the “Music” page of my website, you can hear my own love story, avec fantaisie, which I dedicated to the memory of this great musician of the flute whose performance and teaching inspired me so much.
panaudio 
I also studied with Alain in Nice and wrote an article for Flute Forum about the “passionate abandon” with which he played. That’s probably similar to your “avec fantaisie”. It made me ponder our American use of vibrato and our neat, precise, careful way of performing.
I’d like to read that article.
M. Marion had opinions about American flute playing. One of the summers I worked with him, a good amateur flutist who was majoring in some unrelated subject at Barnard also took part in the stage, and at one lesson, he said to her (and this might be slightly paraphrased): “You play well, but your vibrato is always the same [which he then demonstrated]. This is the bad American style. It might be OK if you are Julius Baker and you are playing in the orchestra, but now you are playing solo repertoire.”
That evening, the Barnard student saw me hanging out outside our dorm building and asked me what I thought of M. Marion’s “anti-American” remarks. I replied that I completely agreed with him, which ended the conversation right away. 🙂
Exactly. My thought at the time was that Americans play without passion, boringly neat. I was there the summer of the Munich competition, which took place a week or so later. The class was full of competitors from various countries. It was thrilling to hear the different styles.