(Clearwisdom.net) On February 22, 2008, Divine Performing Arts on Tour successfully staged its first show of the Chinese Spectacular in London. About two thousand spectators watched the show and applauded each number enthusiastically. Among the audience there were artists, including renowned British flutist William Bennett. He and his family watched the show together and afterwards expressed great admiration for the performance.
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Mr. Bennett and his wife came up to the stage to talk to the Divine Performing Arts Orchestra members after the show and praised the show as an unequaled performance.
Mr. Bennett said that the various performances in the show were of different styles with lots of lovely touches that he found very impressive. He said, "I was very impressed earlier on when a whole lot of orange-robed monks came on slowly and the ladies came on at a completely different speed and they didn't seem to be moving - they were just gliding along and it was the most wonderful piece of Counterpoint (Bennett specializes in Baroque music and the contrapuntal fugues of Bach)."
Throughout the performance, Mr. Bennett paid special attention to the orchestra. "I'm fascinated to see and hear the instruments you've got, the mixture of Chinese and Western instruments in the same orchestra. There's a funny short oboe thing with a mouthpiece (suo-na) which I wanted to hear more of. I haven't heard of enough yet. I am looking forward to hearing some more. The Chinese flute with the membrane makes a lovely buzzy noise from time to time - the real original flute - and it was very interesting to hear it."
Mr. Bennett continued, "I very much enjoyed the drumming. But I'm interested in hearing the Chinese flute with the membrane played like that in the orchestra. I wanted to hear more of that oboe with the disc at the top. But that erhu was really wonderful. I can't quite work out how it works. It's quite similar to the violin, but I can't work out how they separate the notes on two strings, [it's a] very touchy, tactical instrument."
William Bennett is a British flute player, who has played with most of the major British orchestras. He also has a career as a soloist. He developed an instrument, the 'flauto di bassetto', which extends the range of the flute down a minor third, and one of his recordings, Mozart's Concerto K 218, features this. In the late 1960's, his work on flute acoustics, in collaboration with other British flutists and the British flute maker Albert Cooper, helped vastly to improve the intonation of the modern flute. The resulting method of tuning is commonly called the Bennett-Cooper scale. He was awarded a lifetime achievement award by the National Flute Association in 2002, and he was appointed a Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by the Queen in 1995.