they felt those professions were more reliable than becoming a professional musician. At the beginning of the Second World War, Rampal duly entered medical school in Marseille, studying there for three years. In 1943, authorities of the Nazi Occupation of France drafted him for forced labour in Germany. To avoid this, he fled to Paris, where it was easier to avoid detection, by frequently changing his lodgings. While in Paris, Rampal auditioned to study flute at the Paris Conservatoire, where he was taught by Gaston Crunelle from January 1944. Years later, he succeeded Crunelle as flute professor at the Conservatoire. After four months, Rampal's performance of Jolivet's Le chant de Linos won him the coveted first prize in the conservatory's annual flute competition. Post-war success In 1945, following the liberation of Paris, Rampal was invited by the composer Henri Tomasi—then conductor of the Orchestre National de France—to perform the Flute Concerto by Jacques Ibert, written for Marcel Moyse in 1934, live on French National Radio. It launched his concert career overnight and was the first of many such broadcasts. With the war over, Rampal embarked on a series of performances: at first, within France; and then, in 1947, in Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands. Almost from the beginning, he was accompanied by pianist and harpsichordist Robert Veyron-Lacroix, whom he had met at the Paris Conservatoire in 1946. By contrast with, as Rampal saw it, his own somewhat emotional Provençal temperament, Veyron-Lacroix was a more refined character (a "true upper class Parisian"), but each immediately found with the other a musical partnership in perfect balance. The appearance of this duo after the war has been described as a "complete novelty", allowing them to make a rapid impact on the music-going public in France and elsewhere. In March 1949, in the face of some scepticism, they hired the Salle Gaveau in Paris to perform what then seemed the radical idea of a recital programme made up solely of chamber music for flute. It was one of the first flute/piano recitals the city had seen, and caused a "sensation". The success encouraged Rampal to continue along that track. The recital was repeated the following year in Paris and news of the young flute-player's virtuosity spread. Throughout the early 1950s, the duo made regular radio broadcasts and gave concerts within France and elsewhere in Europe. Their first international tour came in 1953: