Altus AL-RBE Heavy-wall Flute

Some thoughts by Michael Cox

"As a student at the Royal College of Music in London my teacher, Sebastian Bell, put an instrument in my hands and said: "Here, this is the sort of instrument you should be playing!" It was a Louis Lot flute. William Bennett helped me to track down one which was available to buy. It turned out to be a flute which had previously been owned by both Peter Lloyd (then principal flute of the London Symphony Orchestra) and before him Jean-Pierre Rampal. Not a bad pedigree I thought! Like most of us, in our search for the perfect match between player and instrument, it started a happy progression through the various Louis Lots I have owned over the years. My oldest was one made as early 1857 but it was my favourite and most recent one which provided me with my first contact with Altus when they helped me to put a new mechanism on a very old and beautiful tube.

The thing about Louis Lot is that, right then, at the very beginnings of the Boehm flute, he produced instruments with an extraordinarily special, complex and colourful core sound, at the same time rich, warm and sweet. A flute sound which I think has never been equalled. Until now that is!

Earlier this year I decided that I needed to buy a flute with a low B, nothing special, just something for occasional use. I trawled through the stock in the London flute shops and took some new flutes out to try out in the Barbican Arts centre where I play a lot of my concerts. All my colleagues were quick and completely unanimous in deciding which one was the one they liked. It was the Altus AL. When I got home I played it to my wife and children, all of whom are musicians, and was surprised to find they could hardly tell the difference between the Altus and my Lot.

Apparently, Mr Tanaka, of Altus Flutes, set about developing a modern instrument that used many of the old techniques used by Lot including a seamed tube. More importantly from research it was discovered that Lot’s atelier prepared their own silver which varied slightly in the proportion of its elements. By taking small samples from several Lots and analysing them they found the metal had a very different make up to the silver that is generally used today. They found 22 separate elements and worked out from their data how best to combine them. Interestingly two of the elements used were found to be so seriously toxic that, fortunately, for the health of Altus' work-force, they were left out. Given that one of the elements was arsenic that was probably a good choice!

The end result for me is that I have unexpectedly and suddenly found the flute of my dreams. The wonderful thing I have discovered is that not only does my new Altus AL have that special Louis Lot sound but it also has more besides. There is an added luminosity to the sound, an impeccable mechanism, a far greater ease through the instrument’s range and, most excitingly creatively, an extraordinary flexibility.

I have a very vocal approach to playing. Like my Lots I find my new flute carries my voice wonderfully faithfully and has a great sung vowel at its core. Unlike the Lots my AL seems to respond incredibly quickly to every thought and emotion I imagine in my song. The day after I picked up my flute from the flute shop we began rehearsals for Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe. I decided to try out the new flute in the big solo; I thought just for the first rehearsal. I was wrong! I ended up using it for the all the rehearsals, the recorded concert and everything since."