The 39th annual Basically Beethoven Festival concludes Sunday, July 28, with an afternoon of music for flute and strings. Local artist Margaret Fischer is a featured performer and she’s participated in this interview for our audience to get an insider’s look at the concert.
When did you start playing the flute? Why did you choose the instrument? Did you learn other instruments? I started playing the flute when I was 10 in my elementary school's 5th grade music elective class. The woman who ran the program became my private flute instructor from 6th grade until I started college. Unlike here in Texas, where the kids get to try out instruments under the watchful eye of pros to determine what they're suited for (I think of it as the "instrument petting zoo"), I was just told to pick one of a bunch of instruments on a table. The flute was the shiniest, so that's what I chose! Luckily for me, I took to it well. Piano was my first instrument but I only took lessons for less than a year - it was evident that I was never going to be a pianist! I haven't had any formal training on other instruments but I can play basic guitar chords.
When did you decide to become a professional musician? I think I was around 15 years old when I decided that I wanted to pursue music as a career. There was no one magic moment or lightning bolt where everything changed - I just woke up one day and realized that I couldn't imagine spending my life doing anything else.
Does being a classical musician influence what music you listen to for fun? Because I'm exposed to so much music for work reasons, sometimes I fall in love with pieces that I never would have encountered any other way, and I will crave listening to it even when the performance is long over. I listen to lots of non-classical music as well, and I don't think it's weird to have a diverse playlist. It's like having a wide variety of food in your diet - music is food for the ears!
There’s no “standard” ensemble on today’s program, such as a woodwind quintet or string quartet. How did you decide what to include on your program? Did you decide on ensembles first, or build an ensemble around the pieces you chose? Alex McDonald had asked me if I had any "wishlist" pieces that I wanted to play, and the one that immediately came to mind was the Mozart flute quartet in D Major. I played many woodwind quintets while in school, but it's a rare opportunity for me to get to collaborate with strings, so I jumped at the chance. The Debussy was another wishlist piece for me (in its flute/piano incarnation), so it was very exciting to discover this arrangement for the exact instrumentation that we already had for the Mozart! To balance out the program, we thought it would be nice to feature the ensemble in duos.
What piece or recording should everyone have in their music library? Ah, this is such a hard question! There's one specific CD I'm rather attached to - it's a 1983 recording of Leonard Bernstein conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Barber's Adagio for Strings. The climax of that piece has an unbelievably vocal quality to it, it astounded me when I first heard it! The recording is on Spotify, but it's better experienced from the CD.
What piece on the program are you most looking forward to sharing with our audience, and why? I'm excited for the entire program! But, I think the Mozart will be a particular treat. I hope the audience has as much fun listening to it as we are having playing it!
What advice would you give 14-year-old you? Slow down and practice your fundamentals more!! It's not about how fast you can play today, it's about how well you can play years from now. You're in this for the long haul, so take the time to do things right.
Bonus question: flutist or flautist? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet! I don't have a preference, but "flutist" seems to be more commonly used in America while "flautist" seems more commonly used overseas.