(Editor's Note: These reviews first appeared in the American Record Guide. They are reprinted here with the kind permission of the editor.)
Bach, CPE: Ku Ebbinge, oboe
Oboe Concertos by Strauss, Bach, Marcello:
Ray Still, oboe
The French Oboe: Gregor Zubicky, oboe
Italian Oboe Concertos: Brynjar Hoff,
oboe
Premiere Oboe Works: Harry Sargous, oboe
Wolf-Ferrari, Strauss, Vaughan William,
Barber: Humbert Lucarelli, oboe
O Baroque: Humbert Lucarelli, Joseph Robinson,
Alex Klein, oboes
Mozart, Loeffler, Paladilhe, Britten:
John Mack, oboe
Bach Oboe concertos: John Mack, oboe
Oboe Concertos in E-flat, B-flat;
Oboe Sonata in G minor
Ku Ebbinge; Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra/Ton Koopman-Erato 75560
(Elektra) 50 minutes
If I were to name the dozen or so most important works written for solo oboe before 1900, these three would be among them. CPE Bach, almost an exact contemporary of Leopold Mozart, is always praised for anticipating new orientations in music, incorporating innovations with tradition, and all in his very personal style. Every oboist loves these works, even if we find it difficult to articulate just why. Each is perfectly suited to the instrument: the melodies are fully developed stories, and oboists love to narrate. The fast movements are virtuosic, fleshed out, demanding; and oboists love to elaborate. The drama and joy are challenging and unbounded. The harmonies are fresh and inventive. Even the length (twice as long as the usual composition written for us to this time) gives us the opportunity to get into ourselves and the music a little more before the final cadence.
I wish I could show the same enthusiasm for the performance as I have for the compositions. Unfortunately, my objections will probably be labelled simply as preference for the modern instrument performance of baroque music as opposed to the period-instrument renditions. I will try to substantiate my ideas as convictions derived from years of study and performance.
Ton Koopman conducts the Amsterdam Baroque orchestra from the harpsichord, and ironically I find his continuo playing the only effective musical contribution to these performances. I am not the first to object to the choppy phrasing of this group's playing, and I find this style incongruous with CPE Bach's harmonic rhythms and patterns-long and interweaving, never chopped up. It is puzzling not to hear vibrato as a means of expression, of building tension to the flex point of the phrase and then releasing it. As a point of scholarship, its presence is documented nearly a century before these works were Written in 1765. Personally, I can attest to the presence of vibrato along with resonance and projection as a natural phenomenon derived from proper tone production on a wind instrument-as it similarly occurs in a well-placed, well-supported voice. In this sense, the 'use' of vibrato could hardly be dated. Beyond my own experience, I have Leopold Mozart's observation in 1756 to reinforce the idea that "the Tremolo is an adornment which arises from Nature herself". On instruments for which vibrato is not a result of normal tone production, we read of the devices performers invented to imitate the effect. In addition to the familiar string techniques documented as early as 1654, CPE Bach in 1753 suggests the technique on the clavichord: "The finger holds down the key and rocks it so to speak". Where could the notion of playing baroque music without vibrato possibly have its basis? Perhaps from a quote such as WA Mozart's description of the virtuoso oboist Ramm "who plays very well and has a delightfully pure tone". If you will go on to read the entire body of Mozart's aesthetic criticism in his collected letters, you will become convinced that this is more likely to mean without a faulty or exaggerated vibrato (with neither wobble nor 'nanny-goat' characteristics). All comments made by 18th Century writers on the human voice can and should be applied to instrumental tone production and musicianship, since in all cases the aesthetic was one and the same. In 1777 Leopold writes to his son on hearing Haydn's "Oboe Mass" (the so-called Hieronymus Mass in C), "What I particularly liked was that, since oboes and bassoons resemble very much the human voice, the tutti seemed to be a very strongly supported chorus of voices". These remarks apply to the 18th Century aesthetic commonly referred to as bel canto. As to what really was done by 18th Century musicians, you can be sure it covered the gamut, as it does today, from straight, white tones, to wobbles, to glottal bleating, to lovely pure tones with expressive vibratos that carried the emotional message of the phrase. The sorriest evidence of the period was Hotteterre's pathetic shaking of the edge of the tone hole to produce 'vibrato' as documented in his Rudiments of the Flute, Recorder and Oboe. A series of lessons with Julius Baker or Robert Bloom would be in order where he alive today. At any rate, one did not and does not need a license to practice vibrato in public!
Mr. Ebbinge produces a lovely vibrato accidentally, it seems, on one or two phrases; otherwise we must do without hearing this most human quality of the art of singing. The strings follow suit, leaving themselves with only cells of volume for significant harmonic points in the line, deprived of the use of intensity variation. This swelling is also disliked intensely by many music lovers, but perhaps I can again attempt to explain this irritation. The incessant swelling forms patterns of sing-song stress, robbing the highly complex harmonic patterns of their meaning much as group recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance or the Lord's Prayer stresses completely illogical parts of speech. "Harmonic illiteracy" I call it, resulting in metric tyranny. Recently, there is at last a popular movement to put back into practice the 'music as language' ideology. But rather than cite 20th Century sources of this approach, we should go back to the famous debate of 1737 in the periodical Der critische Musicus in which JS Scheibe directs a sharp attack against the compositional art of JS Bach, calling it artificial and murky. (We now see these objections to have been caused by Bach's practice of writing out ornamentation.) Significantly, Bach's defender was JA Birnbaum, a schoolmaster and teacher of rhetoric at Leipzig University. His defense of Bach's art substantiates the notion that Bach used the rules of rhetoric as a basis of his compositional technique. Beyond that, Isolde Ahlgrimm points out in her important essay some years ago that "the-most apposite passages in Quantz, known to all musicologists, are lifted verbatim out of Gottsched's Art of Speaking. With that as background, can we agree that the mindless, repetitive swelling of so-called authentic baroque performances reminds one more of a nursery school reading the 'The Night Before Christmas' than of the sophisticated patterns governed by the rules of tonality and of both rhetoric and elocution which were operative for the composers and performers of the period?
And while I'm complaining, I might as well address 'period' instruments! I find it incongruous that some performers can use period string instruments and elicit from them sounds which are thin, edgy, nasal, wiry, when the gut strings, the bow with more arc and less tension, etc, should logically give a mellower, rounder tone. Wind players get sounds ranging from squeaky and wispy to dull and without resonance and vibrato, from instruments with larger bores and wider reeds (less resistance) -also an illogical result. We have accepted the fact that typewriters can't spell (until recently!); can we finally recognize that 90% of an instrument's 'characteristics' can be attributed to the player's ability to imagine a sound and create it? If the ideals of the 18th Century masters are achieved, the date and construction of the instrument is irrelevant.
Suggested listening: JS Bach and Sons performed by Musical Offering; Nonesuch 79104
Ray Still.
Oboe Concertos by Strauss, Bach, Marcello-Acade my of London/Richard
Stamp-Virgin 90813-60 minutes
Ray Still has capped a long and illustrious career as principal oboist of the Chicago Symphony with several solo albums, this being the latest. The wonderful playing of the Academy of London is an appropriate setting for some of the finest oboe performances in recent times.
Still's performance of the Strauss Concerto is flowing and secure, free of mannerisms and full of genuine emotion. The work, one of the most important in the oboe repertoire, dates from September 1945. The circumstances of the commission bear repeating: "When the Americans occupied Munich after the destruction of the Third Reich, Strauss and his wife were visited by soldiers at their villa in Garmisch. One soldier received rather more cordially than most was John de Lancie, principal oboist of the Philadelphia Orchestra, who asked Strauss to write a work for him." Strauss called it "shavings from an old man's workshop; unassuming and written primarily with a desire to entertain "-this performance accomplishes that to a very high degree. Still's quiet but expressive slow movement is so lovely; at times he gets almost flute-like qualities from the oboe. His use of the "singer's breath" strengthens the dramatic passages, and his technical command of the oboe serves the fast sections well.
The oboe d'amore is the larger alto cousin to the oboe, with a gentle melancholy timbre. Bach used it frequently for "wedding" settings. Still has a beautiful concept of the instrument and this work; he captures its gentle nature and does not push it beyond its natural sound, content to allow it to be the "oboe of love". His baroque style is free of the swelling and dwelling in fashion in too many current performances.
The Marcello Concerto and the three Sinfonias of JS Bach also exhibit Still's mastery of line and color. My only reservation is his choice of this edition of the Marcello, which is not faithful to the original score; the elaboration of the second movement does not do the rest of the artistry justice.
It is impossible for me to write a review without thinking back some 30 years ago to a performance Still gave of the Strauss with the Chicago Symphony. A carload of us drove from the Oberlin Conservatory to this exciting event and were inspired by the performance and touched by his interest in us and the gracious private dinner he gave us lowly students following the performance. Ray Still continues to inspire and touch the heart.
DESSLANDRES: Introduction and Polonaise; TROVLES: Sarabande
et Allegro; SAINT-SAENS: Sonata; BOZZA: Fantaisie Pastorale; DUTILLEUX:
Sonata; POULENC: Sonata; Trio for Oboe, Bassoon and Piano
Gregor Zubicky, oboe; Matti Hirvonen, piano; Per Hannisdal, bassoon-Simax
1057 (Qualiton) 63:30
Since the second half of the 17th Century, Paris has been the center of the universe for the oboe. The hautbois ('high' referring to volume, not pitch) developed simultaneously in many European countries; but it was the Paris firm of Loree which, after 200 years of modifications, fashioned in the 1880s the modern oboe as we know it today. Parallel to the French manufacture of the instrument was the dominance of the Paris Conservatory founded in 1793.
During the 19th Century very few composers were writing solo works for the oboe-either recital repertoire or concertos. (We will mourn forever the loss of Beethoven's Oboe Concerto and be grateful to Clara for encouraging Robert Schumann to write the Three Romances.) Someone suggested that this may be because many of the great solo works of this period were commissioned by wealthy amateurs and the oboe does not lend itself to the occasional player!
Towards the end of the 19th Century and into the 20th the curriculum of the Paris Conservatoire strikes me as odd in two aspects: its exclusion of baroque music and its inclusion of the study of plainchant. In addition to these peculiarities, a tradition grew which resulted in a relatively large repertoire for wind recital music: the Conservatoire commissioned composers to write a special piece as a compulsory examination for student oboists.
This recording presents four such commissioned works. The Deslandres recalls the voice of his teacher, Cesar Franck; the Grovlez (1929) is reminiscent of his teacher, Gabriel Faure; and the Bozza (1939) displays his usual flair and reference to things 'orientale'.
The fourth commission, the Sonata of Henri Dutilleux, is perhaps the only piece of the group which "transcends its category", as oboist Gregor Zubicky explains in his notes. Dutilleux, currently Professor of Composition at the Conservatoire, composed a beautiful, fully developed Sonata for the instrument, one of the finest works of the genre.
The other two works are not related to the commissioning forum. Saint-Saens's lovely Sonata was written in 1921, the last year of his life. Zubicky says that "in his old age, Saint-Saens became a conservative, opposing Debussy and Stravinsky alike. His Oboe Sonata is firmly rooted in the 19th Century; music that is gently romantic, pastoral and pleasant in the best sense of the word." We oboists characterize English music written for our instrument as either "hunting" or "haunting". Saint-Saens makes nice use of the lyric, pastoral, and technically facile characteristics of the oboe in a lovely French vocabulary.
The disc concludes with Poulenc's Trio for oboe, bassoon, and piano. Dedicating it to Manuel de Falla, Poulenc wrote, "I am rather fond of my trio because it has a transparent sound and because it is well balanced. To those who believe me careless of form I would not hesitate to reveal my secrets here: the first movement follows the plan of a Haydn Allegro, and the final Rondo is in the shape of the Scherzo of Saint-Saens's Second Piano Concerto. Ravel always advised me to follow this sort of method, just as he often did."
Zubicky's playing is both sensitive and robust and his colleagues show equal stature. I hope the recording is not ignored for having a preponderance of 'minor' composers. I find it rather touching to hear the voices of Franck, Faure, Debussy, Ravel, Roussel, et al, refashioned for the beautiful voice of the oboe.
MARCELLO, A: in D minor, SCARLATTI, D (arr Bryan): in G; ALBINONI: B-flat; D minor, D; CORELLI (arr Barbirolli)
Brynjar Hoff; English Chamber Orchestra/Ian Watson, Simax 1049 (Qualiton) 60 minutes
Even if I weren't a lover of oboe music, I would buy this recording for the lovely music it presents. Not since Stokowski's album of "Early Italian Music"-Victor LM 1721-have I been so pleased with a grouping of pieces of this period. The three most important works are the Marcello, Scarlatti, and Albinoni D minor. The slow movements of the Marcello and Albinoni rank, along with several movements of Bach and Handel, as the finest writing for the oboe in the baroque period. Brynjar Hoff plays them with great artistry, though I am disturbed that he has not taken greater care with the ornamentation. The elaboration of the second movement of the Marcello is inferior in many respects ( and is not attributed in the notes); conversely the middle of the slow movement of the Albinoni D minor cries out for elaboration.
Without diminishing my praise for this recording, I must point out two other disappointments. The final chord of each movement is separated by an unnatural space from the penultimate chord. Whoever began this tradition should be scolded for interfering with nature. I'd also like to take exception to Mr. Hoff 's staccato, which at times has less length and resonance than the string pizzicato. I know his style of staccato well:
Musically its purpose is to bring vigor and bounce to the writing; mechanically it is produced by stopping the reed with the tongue. I spend many hours practicing and teaching the method of stopping even the shortest of notes with the embouchure to give the performer the ability to shape it. It's time we wind players have a repertoire of strokes parallel to the detache, spiccato, martele, etc. of our string cousins. Thank God the strings do not imitate the staccato used at times by an otherwise very fine artist. The orchestra, under the direction of Ian Watson, plays with great beauty and sophistication.
BOLCOM, SINGER, COWELL, BASSETT
Harry Sargous, with William Bolcom, Robert Conway, pianos; Toronto Sinfon ie tta/ Carl St. Clair
Crystal 326-57 minutes
This is one of the most important records to be released in the last several seasons. The oboe is again coming into its own as a solo instrument, reclaiming its place in the hearts of listeners and in the programming of musical organizations. A recording like this one-virtuoso playing by oboist Harry Sargous and a wide variety of appealing works for oboe by some of our most important American composers is-cause for celebration.
The Bolcom Spring Concertino for oboe and small orchestra (1987) is a joy to hear. It is music at its best, full of joy and warmth, played exceedingly well by Sargous and the excellent Toronto Sinfonietta. The Dialogues for oboe and piano (1987) by Leslie Bassett is a work of great stature using both instruments to their fullest dramatic capacities and taking up where works like Gunther Schuller's Oboe Sonata left off. In the Singer, Sargous thrills us with high notes "beyond the beyond" and techniques that, though 'modern,' give us a sense of timelessness. Sargous may be the greatest American oboist of this genre. As will all great instrumentalists, Sargous not only inspired great new works for this recording, but also unearthed the Three Ostinati with Chorales (1937) of Henry Cowell, a touching work that beautifully complements the others.
WOLF-FERRARI, STRAUSS, VAUGHAN WILLIAMS, BARBER
Lehigh Valley Chamber Orchestra/Donald Spieth
Koch 7023-74 minutes
Some people acquire a signature of style as they mature, and whether it is with a letter or a gift, a meal or an outfit of clothing, they manage to present a confluence of their sensibilities, their idea of what is lovely and precious, of the profound and the playful, of the familiar and the undiscovered. Like his recitals, this CD is signature Bert Lucarelli in his prime. He has chosen a sublime repertoire, works for oboe and orchestra written by four important composers at the height of their own maturity. I am always impressed with Lucarelli's thoughtful way of teaching through program notes; and his essayist, Benjamin Folkman, again sheds perspective on the need for maturity for a composer even to turn to the oboe as a soloist in a concerto. Indeed, I am beginning to think that high regard for the oboe could be used as the barometer of a society's maturity; the Greeks did not consider one a "man" unless he appreciated the aulos. Bach and Mozart clearly preferred the oboe and showered us with works of passion and depth. Having been entirely overlooked in the 19th Century when "super-heroes" were the vogue, the oboe's return to prominence on the 20th Century concerto stage with recent major works by such composers as Bolcom, Tower, Rochberg, Barber, Maxwell-Davies, Zwilich, Harbison, Carter, and Street gives me hope that real feelings in real proportions are again valued.
This is the finest performance of Lucarelli's distinguished career. His sound is warm and full, phrasing supple and expressive, technique flawless. The four works include two staples of the oboe concerto repertoire, the Strauss and the Vaughan Williams, performed beautifully by both soloist and orchestra. My only complaint comes in the Strauss where the oboe seems overbalanced by the orchestra-a common problem in performance but unnecessary in a recording. I also do not appreciate circular breathing, a technique wind players use to take in air even as they play. This gives the ability to play seemingly forever. My aesthetic has always been to hear oboe lines as "songs without words" and a phrase three times longer than a virtuoso singer's destroys validity to my ear. Also, the "singer's breath" is such an important form of expression, it should be embraced not avoided. This is a minor point, however, in view of the wonderful reading Lucarelli gives the Strauss. His unique handling of the coda, a potentially weak ending, suggests that he has not just a passing knowledge of Strauss's writing, including his tone poems, operas and songs.
Wolf-Ferrari's Idillio-Concertino gives us warm, lush writing
of the type that oboists were born to sing. The haunting Canzonetta
was the last work Samuel Barber composed before he died, a kind
of "final simple statement and farewell". Lucarelli
gives this giant of the 20th Century a touching eulogy by this
performance.
Three oboes and strings: TELEMANN, HANDEL and ALBINONI
Humbert Lucarelli, Joseph Robinson, Alex Klein, oboes
MCA 6402-50 minutes
This is a disc you'll want to buy for Sunday mornings: guaranteed to make the coffee smell fresher and the day seem even more welcome. From the very fresh overture-Handel's Entrance of the Queen of Sheba from Solomon-to the final minuet, the sounds delight the spirit. With no movement longer than 5 minutes, moods alternate rapidly from the most joyful to the most touching affetuoso.
Messrs Lucarelli, Robinson, and Klein balance each other perfectly in tone and temperament. The rich texture of vocal resonance set up by these three virtuoso oboists combined with the excellent string group alternates with aria-like solo statements for each.
The program notes give an obligatory apology for their having chosen "modern" instruments to perform 18th Century music. I wish performers who follow the ideals of a period as closely as these do would drop the self-conscious reference to their equipment. (Indeed, more frequently than not I have heard so-called "authentic" performers on "period" instruments sound hard and wooden or thin and harsh.) I am also confused by the nod to "authenticity" by their attempt to achieve the "purity of vibrato-free chords". Has anyone reread CPE Bach lately, especially the passage in which he describes how to achieve vibrato even on the clavichord: "The finger holds down the key and rocks it, so to speak." The cantilena or singing quality of a sound well-produced, with its natural vibrato, was the aesthetic of the day, whether that sound was used contrapuntally or vertically.
The oboists, collaborating with harpsichordist/conductor Anthony Newman, perform with tasteful style and ornamentation. There is real stature to the phrasing, particularly in the touching 'Sommeille' (Sleep) of Telemann. It is in such a movement that the falling two-note "sigh" figure, a baroque favorite, is so often distorted by lesser artists into a bilious affair; here it is handled with poetic care. The unusual amuses us, as with 'Irresoluts' of Telemann, which can be played as either a slow or fast movementof course we are treated to both! These selections will definitely win you over to the incredible variety that exists in 18th Century works when played by artists who take you along an interesting and everchanging journey-as opposed to the "crank it out" approach of many baroque albums. just for fun, play this back to back with Early Italian Music (RCA LM 1721), a similar recording from the 1950s by Leopold Stokowski, another signature artist who surrounded himself with performers of great stature.
MOZART: Quartet in F; LOEFFLER: Deux Rhapsodies; PALADILHE: Solo de Concert; BRITTEN: Six Metamorphoses after Ovid with Eunice Podis, p; Daniel Majeske, v; Abraham Skernick, va; Stephen Geber, vc
Crystal 323-52 minutes
The 1975-78 Telarc records of John Mack are being rereleased in CD format. Mack assembles a first-rate ensemble, principal strings of the Cleveland Orchestra, for a first-rate performance of the Oboe Quartet of Mozart. His tone is lovely, his playing is flexible and graceful, matching line and style beautifully with the string ensemble.
With violist Abraham Skernick and pianist Eunice Podis Mack gives a warm reading of Loeffler's Two Rhapsodies (1905), a rich, complex work requiring mastery of texture and color. Mack goes on to give an appealing performance of Britten's unaccompanied work of 1951. His playing clearly descends from the great Paris Conservatory tradition, with his own distinct touches.
BACH: Oboe concertos, S 1053, 1055,
1059
Douglas Boyd; Chamber Orchestra of Europe
DG 429 225-46 minutes
If transcriptions are troublesome, reconstructions are even more challenging; but a good case is made for these three: two concertos for oboe and strings and one for the oboe d'amore, the "alto" member of the oboe family. They are from the 1730s, a period when Bach added to his duties at the two main churches in Leipzig the directorate of the collegium musicum that Telemann had founded in 1702. The secular works used for these weekly gatherings at Zimmermann's coffee house or at this summer garden outside the city included many transcriptions of earlier works-Bach's own and ones by Marcello, Vivaldi, Albinoni, and so on.
It is very probable that these works existed in the form presented here, and it is gratifying that the effort has been made to restore them and make them available. The same music was used by Bach in instrumental works and as obligato movements in the sacred cantatas, blurring the lines between his secular and sacred and his vocal and instrumental writing. The reconstructions required real high-wire musicological detective work and to my ear are very satisfactory except in a few places in the S 1053, where the figuration does not sound quite characteristic of JS Bach. (This may have been license taken by the soloist.) The material is some of the greatest moments of Bach's writing, ranging from the less familiar but deeply moving slow movement of 1053 to the familiar air in 1059. The fast movements contain some highly inventive passages, such as the pedal section at the end of the first movement of 1059. Whether or not you've heard and studied Bach extensively, you'll like these works.
The Chamber Orchestra of Europe, of which Douglas Boyd is principal
oboist, has appeared internationally with major conductors, including
its Artistic Advisor Claudio Abbado, since its founding in 1981.
It is an excellent ensemble and plays with great sensitivity and
vitality. Douglas Boyd is a young oboist to be watched. Although
his performance understandably exhibits more youthful enthusiasm
than mature introspection, he is definitely a major talent with
much to say.