Flautist with dazzling technique who played with Jimi Hendrix
WILLIAM BENNETT, who has died aged 86, was the pre-eminent flautist of his day, admired for the wide range of colours, characters and dynamics he drew from the instrument, as well as his dazzling vibrato; he played with chamber ensembles and in orchestras, but was best known for his sparkling concerto appearances with the English Chamber Orchestra and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields under Sir Neville Marriner.
Bennett also formed enduring musical partnerships with the harpsichordist George Malcolm, the pianist Clifford Benson and the violinist Yehudi Menuhin. In the studio he made the first British recordings of the complete Handel flute sonatas and discs featuring works by Boulez, Berio and Messiaen, as well as Richard Rodney Bennett’s Winter Music, one of many works written for him. He also recorded with Jimi Hendrix and Wynton Marsalis.
Like a proud father, Bennett championed the flute’s versatility and vast tonal range, which allowed him to transcribe works written for cello, violin or piano. “You think the flute is a boring type of pipe that goes ‘fluuu’ at you,” he said. “I maintain that it’s not a boring pipe but an empty vehicle, like a magician’s hat.”
William Ingham Brooke Bennett, known by his initials as Wibb, was born in London on February 7 1936, the son of Frank Bennett and his wife Faith (née Brooke), who were architects. His early ambition was to follow in their footsteps, but at the age of 12 he persuaded his mother to buy him a flute.
At school he made a “not very good” balalaika and a “non-kosher” guitar; soon he got to know of the guitarist Julian Bream. “That man makes so many colours on the instrument and I wanted to play like that on the flute,” he said. Later he experimented with altering the tone holes, building his own instrument and inventing a tuning patch to improve intonation. Today the William Bennett Scale is used by some flute makers to judge the position of the holes.
By the age of 15 Bennett was at the Guildhall School of Music, where he continued to study during National Service with the band of the Scots Guards.
He won a scholarship to work with Jean-pierre Rampal in Paris and during the 1960s studied with Marcel Moyse, who “showed me much about how to listen and I started more consciously imitating singers”. One of his favourite memories was discussing how to pitch notes with Janet Baker while they shared a train journey to Bath.
His orchestral career took him from the BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra to Sadler’s Wells Orchestra before becoming principal flute of the London Symphony Orchestra. He played with the Prometheus, Vesuvius and Melos ensembles and was a member of the Dartington Ensemble, though his memories of al fresco music-making at Dartington Hall were coloured by being stung on the lip by a wasp while enjoying a lunchtime glass of cider before playing Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No 5.
During the 1980s he was professor of flute in Freiburg, Germany, and later taught at the Royal Academy of Music. Meanwhile, his International Flute Summer School was a popular fixture with flautists for more than 35 years. His pride and joy was an 1878 French-made Louis Lot instrument, the equivalent of a Stradivarius violin, while his own artwork often adorned his CD covers.
Bennett, who listed his hobbies as wine-making and cockroach-baiting, was appointed OBE in 1995, and in 2002 he was awarded the National Flute Association’s lifetime achievement award. In 1961 he married Rhuna Martin, a cellist. That was dissolved, and in 1981 he married Michie Komiyama, also a flautist. She survives him with their son and two daughters from his first marriage.