9-year-old plays Flight of the Bumblebee at 210bpm without breaking a sweat
8 March 2018, 11:35
This 9-year-old flautist playing Flight of the Bumblebee at 210bpm with circular breathing will make you freak out about what you’ve been doing with your life.
Emma He is a 9-year-old flautist from California, and she is ridiculously awesome at her instrument.
Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee is a notoriously fiendish piece of music which the composer wrote as an orchestral interlude for his opera, The Tale of Tsar Saltan. Its composition is intended to mirror the chaotic flying pattern of a bumblebee.
So naturally, only the most virtuosic musicians attempt to imitate it – and that now includes 9-year-old Emma.
Dedicating her performance to her flute teacher Jim Walker (aww), she trills, circular breathes and triple tongues her way through one glorious minute of fluting.
Cue (a fully-justified) self-satisfied smile:
Find Emma on YouTube for more videos.
And if you’re not feeling Rimsky-Korsakov’d-out, here’s a version of Flight of the Bumblebee that Rachmaninov arranged for two pianos (it’s totally insane).
