On a Pedestal

Alfred Flaszynski (1919-1985)

By Anthony Parsons

Alfred Flaszynski (1919-1985)Lipiny is a very small town several miles outside Katowice, the main town of High Silesia in Southern Poland. Here, Alfred Flaszynski was born on 13th March 1919. At the age of fourteen he enlisted in the Polish Army as a boy musician. Whilst the army seemed to offer security, it was not the kind of long-term musical future that appealed to him, and after one year he bought himself out and began to study the violin and trombone at Katowice Conservatory. Professor Kwiatkovsky took Alfred, and over three years equipped the young man with the technique which elicited praise from many of the world's greatest conductors and forever stamped him as a player of sheer class. The result of his efforts was the First Trombone position in the Katowice Radio Orchestra on leaving the Conservatory. A year later, on 1st September 1939, the Tenth German Army swept through Silesia on the first day of the Second World War and on October 26th, Silesia was incorporated into the Reich. The programme for implementing Nazi racist policy (Germanisation) was instituted. No Pole was allowed to own a radio or gramophone; Polish Orchestras and music were banned. The Nazis took control of the Krakow Opera and staged productions there with a German orchestra but with a handful of Poles in positions that Germans could not fill. Alfred found himself appointed Principal Trombone.

Risking terrible punishment, at a Gala performance graced by the presence of high ranking officers, he fired a small, hard pellet through his trombone slide at one of them. He luckily escaped detection. However, his career at the Opera came to an abrupt and frightening end when the Gestapo raided his flat and caught him listening to a radio tuned to the BBC. He was immediately imprisoned, but three months later was released, conscripted into the German Army, and posted to a band in East Prussia. Evidently another shortage of German trombone players Reich. The programme for implementing Nazi racist policy (Germanisation) was instituted. No Pole was allowed to own a radio or gramophone; Polish Orchestras and music were banned. The Nazis took control of the Krakow Opera and staged productions there with a German orchestra but with a handful of Poles in positions that Germans could not fill. Alfred found himself appointed Principal Trombone. Risking terrible punishment, at a Gala performance graced by the presence of high ranking officers, he fired a small, hard pellet through his trombone slide at one of them. He luckily escaped detection. However, his career at the Opera came to an abrupt and frightening end when the Gestapo raided his flat and caught him listening to a radio tuned to the BBC. He was immediately imprisoned, but three months later was released, conscripted into the German Army, and posted to a band in East Prussia. Evidently another shortage of German trombone players came to his rescue! From East Prussia, troops were often fed to the Eastern Front, and where Alfred was destined to go. At the last moment his bandmaster sent him west and he spent the next two years in an entertainment troupe moving about Germany, Italy, and the invaded territories.

Summer of 1944 found him in Antwerp. When the 11th Armoured Division of the Allied forces fought its way through France and Belgium toward Antwerp, Alfred (in full German uniform) went to a hotel frequented by German officers, and where he was known as one of the orchestra. There he found a Belgian worker whom he knew, and explained that he was not a German, but a Pole, intending to give himself up to the Allies. As a result the Resistance hid him in a cellar of the hotel until the British arrived. Now a prisoner of the British, Alfred was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp somewhere in France for screening, and then moved to England for further interrogation. After clearance he was sent to a Polish camp at Forres, near Elgin, before being posted to the 14th Polish Lancers, stationed in the Borders. He was issued with a trombone and was back in music again. The German unconditional surrender came in May and Polish soldiers were given the option of staying or going home. Alfred decided to stay and he eventually received his demob papers and an army grant to study at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music where he gained a diploma as teacher/performer.

His first job in this country was in George Evans' dance band in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Whilst fulfilling this contract a vacancy occurred in the Hallé Orchestra for 2nd Trombone and Alfred auditioned. He was offered the job. Shortly afterwards, the 1st Trombone job at Liverpool became vacant. He auditioned, and was offered that job too. Naturally the principal chair was the more tempting of the two options, so he handed in his notice at Newcastle, declined the Hallé offer, and prepared to take up his first appointment to a British orchestra. Following hard on the offer from Liverpool, he was disconcerted to receive a call from the Musicians Union, telling him not to accept the position at Liverpool as the orchestra was on strike. This unwelcome news brought fresh frustration and uncertainty until a vacancy occurred in the Scottish National Orchestra for Principal Trombone. Alfred auditioned, and, you guessed it, he was offered that job too. So, in the autumn of the eventful year of 1949 he at last settled down to the work he had longed to do. With a secure future, he now felt able to propose marriage to Lily Mackay, the lassie he had met in Castletown on one of his Scottish postings. He worked contentedly with the orchestra for four years, until an offer came from London.

The Philharmonia was founded by Walter Legge in 1945, and was by 1953 well established as the country's leading recording orchestra. Alfred joined when the number of sessions was rising towards its peak, and its list of conductors, spearheaded by Karajan, included every great name including Toscanini. Legge's record label, EMI, had issued its first LP in December 1952 and was creating new performances to replace the old 78 rpm discs, thereby providing full diaries as far as the eye could see. Alf's new colleagues were Arthur Wilson, Fred Mansfield, and Phil Catelinet, (tuba). Principal trumpet and horn were Harold Jackson and Dennis Brain respectively. The orchestra toured frequently, and Alf regularly came up against trouble at border crossings as he travelled on a set of stateless person's documents. He had first applied for British citizenship whilst in the SNO, but his application was refused. He was however successful several years later, with Sir Malcolm Sargent as one of the signatories.

By 1963, relations between Legge and EMI had deteriorated, and in 1964 the orchestra was suspended, soon to re-appear under a newly constituted Organisation. In the midst of this uncertainty, Alf suffered the kind of accident every brass player dreads. Romping with his little son, the boy's head caught him a terrible bash in the mouth, cutting the inside of his lip very badly, and probably causing serious dental problems which plagued him ever afterwards. When an offer came from the Hamburg Opera of a shared principal position, with a generous pension arrangement, it looked like an attractive solution to the current situation. But he was lonely in Hamburg, missed the family, and after a year changed his mind.

Returning to London, he found that the BBC were still in the throes of making principal appointments, and when Bill Teskey retired in 1964, Alf became his replacement and stayed until his own retirement in 1981. The job left scope to do extra work in the film and recording studios and conductors and managements wanted to have him in their orchestra. His extrovert and companionable nature endeared him to colleagues, although, in the interests of a balanced article it must be noted that quite early in his career he made some outspoken comments about the quality of British trombone playing which lost him a fair amount of goodwill in some quarters.

He was master of every style demanded by the orchestral repertoire, and had a fund of tricks to cope with the sometimes outrageous demands made by avant garde composers. In fact, his expertise in this field once became too much for Stockhausen. In January 1970, a performance of Setz die Segel zur Sonne, by Karlheinz Stockhausen took place in BBC studio 1, Maida Vale. The composer read a short set of quasi-poetical instructions to four groups of players, one in each comer of the studio. They had to react to it and to each other, expressing themselves through their instruments, whose sounds were then fed through potentiometers, fed back, etc. etc. Alf suggested that it would aid inspiration if the studio were darkened. This idea was seized upon with enthusiasm by the composer, and it was precisely then that control passed out of his hands and into those of the performers, because as anyone knows, it is much easier and more fun to be mischievous in the dark. The piece began, and limped along for a quarter of an hour, seemed to be dying a natural death and finally stopped. Several seconds later, the audience thinking that must be it, and preparing to applaud politely, were stopped in their tracks by a wild glissando and a series of freak, frenetic noises previously unknown to man, which cued the other players into a berserk sequence lasting another ten minutes. Stockhausen, less than delighted, is said to have refused to return to the orchestra until a certain trombone player had left.

In contrast, on an occasion in 1962 when Rozhdestvensky was conducting the Philharmonia at the Edinburgh Festival in a performance of Shostakovich 4th Symphony, Alf was requested to go to the conductor's room after the performance to be thanked personally by Shostakovich for his performance of the long solo in the 4th movement. In later years he expressed a feeling of frustration as a teacher, only giving occasional private lessons, and never being offered a position of any importance. His robust constitution survived four heart attacks during the last 15 years of his life, and a heart operation shortly after he retired. His last appearance among trombonists was at a social occasion organised by David Purser, in December 1984. A great number of his colleagues attended and Alf was back in his element again. As we left he said to me, "Oh Tony, I wish it could go on forever." Three months later this most sociable of men passed on peacefully.

More Articles

BTS Articles