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Meet Walfrid Kujala Interviewed by Jenny Matias and Matthew Wright
Since the age of 13, Walfrid Kujala has had a love-affair with music and the flute. It started by watching his father’s woodwind quintet rehearsals, and his father encouraged him to play flute specifically because it has no reeds to make. He was born in Warren, OH on February 19, 1925. His father was a steel-worker and a part-time professional bassoonist, and his mother was a housewife and played trumpet as a young girl.
After graduating from Eastman School of Music, Mr. Kujala has been flutist and principal piccolo of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1954 to 2001), a former member of the Rochester Philharmonic, former principal flutist of the Grant Park Symphony, and has been on the faculty at Northwestern University since 1962.
Did
you practice very often when you first started playing the flute and what did
you practice?
W.K. I practiced as often as I could. I fell in love with the instrument and practiced at least two hours a day, sometimes more.
I began with a Rubank Elementary method supplemented by The Foundation of Flute Playing by Ernest Wagner, and then after about 3 months of lessons, my first teacher died suddenly, and I was on my own for a couple years. I learned a lot of things on my own, with my father’s help. He’d correct my rhythms and phrasings and I kept practicing.
What formal training did you have to master the flute and piccolo?
W.K. My formal training was at the Eastman School of Music, where I received my Bachelor’s and Masters of Music. It was unusual, though, that my beloved teacher, Joseph Mariano, didn’t teach piccolo. He didn’t particularly like the instrument. Our flute class had to learn on our own. So, I never had a piccolo lesson in my whole life.
Who was your favorite teacher and why?
W.K. My favorite teacher would be the one that I had in high school, because he finally turned me around after two years without a teacher. This was when my family moved to a new city where my father got an orchestra job. The flutist in that orchestra was Parker Taylor. He had recently graduated from Eastman. He took me under his wing and made me realize how much more I really had to learn and showed me the way. When I went to Eastman, it was a very natural evolution to go to Mr. Mariano, Mr. Taylor’s former teacher.
What the most important lessons you learned from your teachers and why?
W.K. Tone and the importance of good rhythm. For
example, Mr. Taylor, my high school teacher, showed me techniques for blowing
the instrument to achieve the right kind of sound. Up to that point I had a
fairly tight embouchure, and a fairly small sound, but he taught how to properly
relax. Tone concepts and working to achieve a beautiful sound are very
important, because you can’t get a job without a good tone.
What would a typical week be like in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra?
W.K. A typical week would be 4 rehearsals and 3 or 4concerts. Rehearsals are during the early part of the week, and concerts are Thursday night, Friday afternoon or evening, Saturday night, and sometimes Sunday afternoon.
Additionally, the orchestra goes on domestic and international tours. The very first international tour was in 1971, just 2 years after Sir Georg Solti became our conductor. It was 4 weeks long, and we covered all the major cities in Europe. We also made a series of recordings in Vienna, which included the Mahler 8th Symphony—Symphony of a Thousand— with an enormous chorus consisting of the chorus from the Vienna State Opera and the Vienna Boy’s Choir. It was a really exciting time. This tour also included a one night stop and concert in Helsinki, Finland, where my parents came from.
What conductor did you most enjoy playing for and what did you learn from this conductor?
W.K. Georg Solti had the longest tenure of all the conductors I played with in the Chicago Symphony. He was a great inspiration and an excellent conductor.
I learned to appreciate and develop different musical styles. One of a conductor’s main jobs is to be able to convey and communicate the depth of a composer’s music. Conductors spend so much time studying these scores, and also, reading historical sources, background information, biographies. All of that contributes to his musical approach. Through the explanations and inspirations of the conductor, we know better how to perform it, to make it sound as the composer might have intended.
What was the best aspect of playing in the symphony?
W.K. Togetherness—to have a job and a career where everyday, you’re working with one hundred other people in close quarters, all of whom are terrific musicians and most of them terrific people.
In what I’m doing now as a teacher, for example, I don’t see my colleagues (fellow teachers) that much on a daily basis, except by chance in the hallways, and twice a year for faculty meetings.
How much did you practice when you were in the Symphony?
W.K. You spend about 20 hours a week in rehearsals and concerts which does leave a fair amount of extra time to practice. In part, playing in the orchestra is a form of practicing, although it doesn’t count the same way as when you’re learning the pieces and doing scales and long tones. So, I practiced anytime I could in addition to my teaching schedule.
What do you enjoy most —playing in full orchestra, chamber groups or solo performances?
W.K. I enjoy all those genres. I enjoy playing in the orchestra most partly because in concerts you’re always in front of the public, and any nervousness and anxiety are reduced, because there are a lot of rests, you’re not playing so constantly, and you never feel physically tired or stressed.
Solo playing, which I enjoy very much, either for recitals or concertos, is more stressful, especially in a recital, because you’re playing more continuously. So, it can be kind of hard.
With chamber music, you’re playing with people who are supporting each other, and it’s not quite so stressful. But these are all great experiences.
Who is your favorite composer to play?
W.K. I would say Mozart is my favorite. This question came up some years ago in a panel discussion at a N.F.A. (National Flute Association) convention. I gave the same answer, and everybody went into uproarious laughter, it took me a moment to realize what they were thinking. Because my position in the Chicago Symphony was as a piccolo player mainly, and Mozart very seldom wrote for piccolo, the translation of my answer, was that whenever the Chicago Symphony played Mozart, I had extra time off, and Mozart was my favorite for that reason. But I didn’t mean that at all. Mozart is a wonderful composer; he didn’t write a lot for flute, but what he did write is really very inspiring.
What is it like to work with living composers, such as your son and Gunther Schuller?
W.K. My son wrote two pieces for me, and it was a lot of fun working closely with him—showing him what I liked and didn’t like. You don’t always get to do that with composers. A composer like Gunther Schuller is more confident about his abilities of writing for a particular instrument, like the flute and piccolo. When he wrote the concerto I premiered, there was very little communication between us, until the time of rehearsals and performance. This was regrettable, because some things he wrote in the music were truly impossible to play. So that was a matter of getting my most diplomatic way of informing him of these things, and it all came out okay.
Do you prefer to teach or perform and why?
W.K. It goes back and forth—they’re both important. When I was playing in the Chicago Symphony, it was a juggling act to fulfill both obligations of performing and teaching. But now that I’m retired from the symphony, I’m becoming more devoted to teaching. I still like playing and I do some recitals and occasionally play in the orchestra, too, as a substitute.
What did you learn specifically from teaching or performing that helped you in the other?
W.K. To help as a teacher I became very aware of and realized the importance of what conductors say in their rehearsals. Conductors in a sense are teachers. I remember this especially vividly when I first became a professional in the Rochester Philharmonic, in Rochester, NY. Erik Leinsdorf, the conductor, often took us aside to tell us about his experiences and how he felt about music. I considered him one of my teachers along with Mr. Taylor and Mr. Mariano.
From the role of teaching to orchestral playing—teaching is largely a matter of correcting the student and leading the student to new paths. When I’m in the orchestra, I try to put myself in the role of the student. I’m teaching myself to make whatever corrections or adjustments I feel need to be done to make my performance better (and to avoid being embarrassed by corrections from the conductor).
When you teach what are the most rewarding moments?
W.K. Seeing the tremendous growth, development, and improvement of students, and in very many cases, their success as professional musicians.
What are the most important characteristics a flute student should have for success in music?
W.K. Drive…coupled with talent.
What are the most important lessons for a flute student?
W.K. Tone, Rhythm, and Style. Style is sometimes hard to communicate and understand at the beginning stages as you’re learning to read music and play the instrument, but by the second year on, you’re dealing a lot more with understanding the style of different composers and periods of music history.
What is your advice for young flute students aspiring to become professionals?
W.K. To become a professional performer, make sure you are certain of your aspirations, and understand the difficulty of achieving success as a professional performer. The jobs are not as plentiful as they once were, and there are many excellent musicians. It’s very competitive.
In some cases, a student doesn’t have a good teacher, and this can make a big difference.
What advice do you have for young players about dealing with the pressures and competitiveness of the music field?
W.K. Everyone is different and reacts differently to these hurdles we’re faced with, and it’s only through experience that you learn to deal with it. There are many psychological avenues that help, but ultimately you have to learn to roll with the punches.
What sources of inspiration helped you stay motivated as a student?
W.K. My father’s encouragement and criticism, and listening to music, particularly to the radio. At that time a surprising number of concerts were broadcast on the radio, such as the NBC Symphony and NY Philharmonic.
How important is the support of your family?
W.K. It’s very important to have that support; although we all know stories where children were not encouraged to pursue music, especially as a career. There’s always the fear of not a making a living from music. Some parents can be very turned off by that, while other are very supportive. There are biographical sketches of composers who fought to keep their studies in composition because their parents thought they wouldn’t make a living. In many cases they went to law or medical school or officer’s training in the military, but it did not quench their thirst for music and eventually they became great composers and performers.
Looking back, is there anything you wish you could have done while studying?
W.K. I would have liked to play jazz flute. When I was a student, flute was not considered a jazz instrument; it made an occasional appearance for color at best played, but was rarely a featured solo instrument. That started changing around the early 1950’s, and suddenly it became a star performer. I was very happy that my son, Steve, was just the right age to take advantage of the jazz revolution in flute playing.
What are you most proud of accomplishing?
W.K. Making a living in music. Essentially that’s it. Being selected as a member of the Chicago Symphony is something I’m so very proud of—it was tremendously exciting. Also, about ten years after joining the symphony, I joined the faculty at Northwestern University.
Why and how has music been important in your life?
W.K. It’s important in the sense that it feels like a religion, something that has great spiritual importance to me and I think to a lot of other people. It has had a lot to do with my development as a person.
Mr. Kujala later added:
…So many good questions, you covered everything, but you didn’t ask me what I’m going to do when I retire! I retired from the orchestra, as you know, but I don’t know when I’ll retire from teaching. I’m enjoying myself.