Page 695 - Liverpool Philharmonic 22-23 Season Coverage Book

At 15 she played the Quantz Concerto in G, live on television, with the Royal
Philharmonic Orchestra. She also performed the Chaminade Concertino with the
London Schools Symphony Orchestra and became first flute in the National Youth
Orchestra.

In 1958 she went to the Royal Academy of Music, where she was taught by Gareth
Morris and made an obsessive study of sight-reading, working through an immense
range of music, sometimes turning the pages upside-down so that the sequences would
not be so recognisable. None of the major orchestras at the time had a female player as
a section principal, but that’s what she wanted to be. “If I ahd been a man, life with the
flute would have been very different,” she said.

She turned down the offer of second flute at Sadler’s Wells, but later – when James
Galway left – joined as the first player. In 1962, she auditioned for principal flautist at
the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra – sight-reading Hindemith’s Symphonic
Metamorphosis faultlessly – and was appointed by Sir Charles Groves. She played with
the orchestra for 13 years, before leaving in 1975 to focus on the children’s concert tours
with Atarah’s Band.

In 1978, Atarah and her husband bought a dilapidated farmhouse in south-west France.
Over subsequent years they renovated the sprawling, interconnected buildings to make
another music centre, where they later based themselves permanently. There, she
taught both children and adults, and hosted residential courses, where meals in local
restaurants were as important as the music. From 1996 she was the south-west France
rep for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, introducing the music exam
system into the region.

A long-standing supporter of the British Flute Society, she served as its chair from 2005
to 2010. Her energy, enthusiasm and love of music and the people she taught never
flagged.

“You have to be flexible. You have to keep on fighting,” she said. “I believe music is the
only thing that educates body, mind and soul. There is nothing else that educates all
these three sides.”

Atarah is survived by Douglas, whom she married in 1976, her daughter, Daliah, from
her first marriage, in 1962, to Uriel Priwes, which ended in divorce in 1974, her
granddaughters, Lily and Eve, her great-granddaughter Tobi Atara, her stepchildren
Richard, Sue and Danielle, stepgrandchildren Chloe, Hannah and Ed, and her three
brothers Gideon, Arnon and David.

Atarah Ben-Tovim, flautist, concert presenter and music educator, born 1 October
1940; died 20 October 2022