“We have the French to be grateful to for the arrival of  ‘The French School of Flute playing’”

The last week has been a busy one with writing and recording material for a one off promotional study package of Kohler’s Valse de la Poupée, from 25 Romantic Studies, Op. 66. Strangely, in both editions that I have seen of this study, this title is translated as ‘Dolls’ Waltz’, as in the plural. This made me curious, as my understanding of French goes as far as telling me that ‘de la’ would imply a single doll! However, looking at my extensive Oxford Hachette French dictionary, I have also discovered that ‘jouer a la poupée’ means ‘to play dolls’, plural. In the end, I contacted Julien Beaudiment, the recently appointed professor of flute at the Conservatoire in Lyon and he has informed me that the translation should be Doll’s Waltz (singular), as Valse des Poupée would be the title for Dolls’ Waltz. I am very glad to have cleared this one up once and for all! The other ‘big’ news from this week is that the Simply Flute lapel brooches have arrived. They are the perfect size, not too small and certainly not too big. Just right for catching the eye, without being over-ostentatious! The latest video is another look around my ‘home’ city, London. This time we will show you Buckingham Palace, the London residence of the Queen and St. James’s Park, where a fact about a bubbling beverage that you just might not have known about, will be revealed. We have the French to be grateful to for the arrival of  ‘The French School of Flute playing’, and the French, rightly so, are very proud of this moment in their history. However, the English played a significant part at the birth of a very different kind of French product that funnily enough, the French choose to keep very quiet about! The new video reveals all!