Last Friday, I posted a wonderful video from 1987 of Jean-Pierre Rampal playing Mozart’s Flute Concerto No. 1 in G Major with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra (see it here). It made me realize that while I have covered many important composers of flute music, that I have not focused nearly as much on the legends of flute performance, both past and present. So here we are! I figured who better to start with than the man who the Washington Post credited with “returning to the flute the popularity as a solo classical instrument it had not held since the 18th century.” Jean-Pierre Rampal was born in 1922 in Marseille, France, the son of flautist Joseph Rampal. Curiously, although his father was a performer and teacher of flute at the Marseille Conservatoire, his parents discouraged him from seeking a career as a musician in favor of a career in medicine. After winning first prize at the Conservatoire’s annual flute competition in 1937 at age 16, he entered medical school at the beginning of World War II. In 1943, Nazi authorities drafted him for forced labor in Germany. To avoid this, he fled to Paris, where it was easier to avoid detection