Leprechaun Charm - And A Will Of Steel -- For James Galway, Playing The Flute Is Still A Labor Of Love

----------------------------------------------------------------- Where to hear Galway

Flutist James Galway performs works by Schubert, Faure, Briccialdi and Doppler next Sunday at 7:30 p.m. at the Seattle Center Opera House. Tickets are $19-$51 (443-4747). -----------------------------------------------------------------

James Galway is on the phone, and he's a trifle breathless.

"Just got in the door! Wait while I hang up my coat! Here, I'll give the phone to my host, and he can tell you all about Chicago."

"Ummm. Errr," says the startled fellow into the receiver.

Seconds later, Galway is back.

"OK then! Where were we?"

No interview, by telephone or in person, with the superstar flutist is likely to be an ordinary one. With his lilting Irish accent still as strong as ever, Galway at 55 has the same teasing element in his voice that once drove the austere conductor Herbert von Karajan crazy when the flutist called him "Herbie."

Those days as principal flute of the Berlin Philharmonic are some two decades in the past, however; Galway's talent and his musical personality were always too big to belong in an orchestra. It has been the recital stage and the international round of soloist engagements that have taken Galway around the world as a favorite performer and recording artist, with a name recognition big enough that even people who don't know much about music still know who he is.

From gold to platinum

They call him the "Man with the Golden Flute" (actually several golden flutes, including one inlaid with an enormous diamond and gold-chased shamrocks). But Galway, who plays a Seattle Opera House recital next Sunday under auspices of the Seattle Symphony, may have to change that title: He now has become the Man with the Platinum Flute (actually several platinum flutes, including one with what Galway calls "just a smattering of diamonds").

"I went to an exhibition of platinum when I was on tour in Japan," he says, "and I tried platinum flutes. They're the greatest thing since sliced bread. The colors are better, and there's a lot more flexibility."

The sound, that trademark enormous Galway sound, is not a result of the flute but of the flutist, Galway explains. Platinum doesn't give him a bigger sound; he does that himself. But there are variations in the ease of producing sound and in the performer's ability to inflect it with subtle nuances, and those elements are Galway's stock in trade.

Considering that his first instrument was the pennywhistle in his native Belfast - and he still brings it out occasionally for concert encores - Galway has come a long way. He began early as a music student, and when he won all the classes (including the adult ones) in a flute competition at 12, he decided to make the instrument his career.

The story of his audition for the Berlin Philharmonic in 1969 is a famous one. Galway applied to audition for the vacant principal-flute position in that orchestra, considered among the world's finest, and scraped together the money to travel to Berlin - only to be told that the job had just been filled.

Other players might have trudged off in despair. Galway threw a fit. He told the startled Berliners that the least they could do, after he'd traveled all this way, was to hear him play. They did. Galway got the job.

There's a will of steel behind that leprechaun charm. Galway wants things his way. After more than 20 years at the top of his profession, he gets what he wants - but he doesn't coast on his talent, as many famous artists do.

"I've been playing with Phillip Moll (the pianist who accompanies his current tour) for 21 years already, and we are very comfortable together: I tell him `Wake me up when it's concert time!' But we are very serious about making music. Before each tour, we practice very intensively for at least a week, as we're doing now in Chicago. I don't believe in just showing up and running through the music. There's enough music-making of that kind already!"

Conquering new worlds

It was apparent early on that Galway was in search of new musical worlds to conquer; the flute repertoire is too small to give him much scope. One of his early successes was a recording of Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons," transcribed for the flute instead of the solo violin. Not long afterward, he began commissioning and requesting flute concertos from composers he admired, and many were eager to write for him (often in such virtuoso terms that Galway's colleagues have their fingers full, trying to play the works).

Among the composers who've written new concertos for him: William Bolcom, Joaquin Rodrigo, John Corigliano, Marc Neikrug, David Heath, John Mayer, Noam Sharif, Malcolm Arnold, Sir Lennox Berkeley, Thea Musgrave.

And Lorin Maazel, whom most music lovers know as a conductor.

"Here's how that one happened," said Galway.

"Lorin and I were playing a flute concerto by Mr. X. It wasn't a great concerto. We both looked at each other, and Lorin said, `I could do better.'

"And he did! It's a very complicated, very interesting piece. I'm quite impressed."

When he isn't premiering new works or touring, Galway is busy adding to his long discography. There's a new disc out, "The French Recital," for RCA Red Seal (with pianist Christopher O'Riley, a frequent Seattle visitor), which contains Debussy's evocative "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun" and "The Girl With the Flaxen Hair" as well as a Widor Suite and other works. The Widor Suite will make its way onto the Seattle program next Sunday, along with Schubert's "Introduction and Variations on Trock'ne Blumen," Faure's Sonata in A Major, Briccialdi's "Carnival of Venice" and Doppler's "Airs Valaques."

At home in Switzerland

Galway has four grown children, ages 21 to 30. None of them lives at his home ("Thank goodness! They've all got earrings in their noses and red and green hair!") near Lucerne, Switzerland, where Galway lives with his wife of 12 years.

He spends a bit more time smelling the roses these days, and has gradually cut back on touring. He now plays 60 concerts a year.

"If anybody wants more, they have to ask me to conduct," chuckles Galway.

"It takes a great deal of time to study and learn the scores well enough to conduct, not just to wave your arms. You have to know the structure of the piece. Playing and conducting at the same time, that's the hardest thing of all; it's very taxing. But I need a challenge for the mind - otherwise I'd become a zombie."