DONJON - Elégie-Etude - Alexis Kossenko (LCDP #5)

Johannes DONJON (1839-1912)
Elégie-Etude (n° 1)
From Huit Etudes de salon (ca1892)

Alexis KOSSENKO : flute
Silver flute by Louis Lot n° 2980 (Paris, 1881)
(collection Bernard Duplaix, previously belonged to J.Donjon)
© Les Concerts de Pan


réalisation : Colin Laurent // www.colinlaurent.com


ABOUT THE FLUTE (introduction by Bernard Duplaix)
The piece by Johannes Donjon that you heard was played on this flute, which precisely belonged to Donjon. It was made by the French maker Louis Lot, who is considered (and was already considered in his lifetime) one of the greatest flute makers on the international market, and often called "the Stradivarius of the flute".

This flute, build in 1881, is made of silver and is equiped with the Boehm mechanism, a system which found it first version in 1832, and came to a final form shortly before 1850. One particularity of it is its embouchure, called "embouchure guillochée" ; this was made on request, and only few of Lot's flutes have it. The technic consisted in engraving a flat silver plate which was curved later.

This flute has an interesting history. It first belonged to Johannes Donjon, a well-known flautist who worked at the opera, performed in solo concerts, and was also a composer ; he actually retired rather early from playing, for unknown reasons, and then dedicated himself to composition.

The flute then came in legacy into the hands of another important flute player, Leopold Lafleurance. Lafleurance was a fanciful personnality, who worked also in the opera orchestra, as a soloist and as a flute teacher in the conservatory, during the First World War. He also had private pupils, and among them, one, who was training for the entrance competition at the conservatory, fell in love with that flute and was begging his teacher to cease it to him. Lafleurance was reluctant to give away an instrument he inheratated ; but he finally changed his mind later, when his pupil signed up to war at only 16 years old (cheating with his age on his documents), and, touched by such act of courage and patriotism, accepted to sell him for a very symbolic price. The young man was lucky enough to come back from the war, and kept playing this instrument all his life (as a dilettante, since he did not make profession of music in the end).