Heinz Holliger quickly shrugs off the suggestion that he's the greatest oboe player in the world. There are far more pressing concerns on his mind. An indefatigable conductor, composer, and traveller, he tirelessly champions what he fears is most lacking in our lives-the appreciation and understanding of contemporary music. If his world renown is worth anything, he says, it is to further the work of living composers. To date, more than 80 works have been written for him by Elliott Carter, Frank Martin, I Sang Yun, Penderecki, and others. As a composer himself-Holliger's works have been described by Carter as "much more advanced music than mine"-he has written three stage works based on the writings of Samuel Beckett (Come and Go, Not 1, and Where When), choral works like the Scardanelli Cycle (inspired by the poems of Holderlin), and several musical hommages to his favorite composer, Robert Schumann.

Holliger grew up in Bern, Switzerland. At age ten he was already accomplished on both piano and oboe. Studies at the Bern Conservatory and later the Paris Conservatory included composition and performance with such luminaries as Pierre Boulez. After a period of time with the Basel Symphony as principal oboe, he began his distinguished solo performing career. which in the last decade has averaged over 100 concerts a year.

Mr. Holliger has come to Kansas City to perform the Elliott Carter Oboe Concerto with the Kansas City Symphony. During his stay, as a favor to his old friend, Maestro William McLaughlin, he has agreed to conduct a master class at the Conservatory of the
University of Missouri-Kansas City. Now, after a rather grueling two hours with students, he settles into a chair, grateful for the peace and quiet of the empty auditorium. He is dressed in a shapeless blue sweater and faded trousers. As he puts his oboe away in its case-he affectionately calls the instrument his "walking stick"--he explains he has been travelling and rehearsing nonstop these last few weeks. "The world is run by the clock," he complains. As he talks his fingers constantly adjust strands of his wayward, thinning hair. His voice is soft and his words are deliberately, moderately paced.

"In America everything has to be on time," he says, a sardonic grin touching the corners of his mouth. "Time is the 'holy cow' in America. I believe it, now that I've played with so many of your orchestras. Everybody is absolutely adoring of the clock. It's a sort of God. Somebody should do a psychological study. The clock is a surrogate for religion."

"How frequently do you take time for master classes like this?

"Not often. But here I know Maestro Bill McLaughlin so I decided to do so. It can give some inspiration for some students, but for others it can be not so healthy. They need more time to live and work with new ideas than I can give them here."

I have been watching him with these students this morning. Although he has worked carefully with each student, he has been intense, unrelentingly critical, and-yes, intimidating. I quote back to him a remark he made to one of the students who had had difficulty with his breath control: 'The audience is not worried about your problem in breathing. They don't care.' I suggest to Mr. Holliger that the comment seemed a bit ruthless.

"I think so, yes," he replies unabashed; "but it's one of the first things to know-that it's just your problem and that it should not get in the way of expressing yourself. Of course, when you hear pupils with good technique but with nothing to say, it's very tough. I think when I see somebody who has problems but does have something he wants to say, I'm ready to help him. But when you have somebody who can make music but has no inner fire, then it's quite hopeless."

"Is that a time when you have to be diplomatic?"

"I don't think you have to be diplomatic! You have to say what the facts are. It's very important when you read the letters of one of Brahms' students when he describes his composition lessons. He says Brahms was so nasty with him. Later he asked Brahms why he was so destructive and Brahms said he did it intentionally. He said if somebody really is a genius, he doesn't let himself be pushed down-that it can trigger more energy and resistance. But if you give up, then it's a sign you should give up."

I ask how much knowledge of the oboe repertory today's students have.

"Usually it's just appalling," he says, grimacing slightly. "Students have little knowledge of their instrument or the literature. This morning a girl came up a version of the Marcello Concerto in the wrong key with added Puccini-esque harmoniesand she wanted to play this in all seriousness! I think now there is no excuse. In the last 20 years there is so much original literature published for wind instruments and there are hundreds, even thousands of pieces in the 18th century and the early classical period. Time is just over for this state of ignorance."

"Mat are some of the more valuable classical pieces for a young oboe player to learn?"

"The Telemann Fantasies for solo instrument," he replies with scarcely a pause. "These pieces are extremely fascinating, because they are very Baroque. It's a Baroque idea in painting and architecture to give an illusionary space. That the third dimension you see is only an illusion. You see fake doors in paintings or on walls. Here you hear a three-part fugue on one instrument and it's an illusionary polyphony. Always one voice has to stop in order to let another voice through. And yet you have to play it and think it's a fugue in three parts in order to get the right spacing of the music. I have my pupils play these pieces because it really helps so much the imagination. You have to have an exact idea of the music you want to play, otherwise, you can't play it just note for note. You must know the form and structure."

"What about the relative state of oboe education abroad?"

"I'm a little bit far from the basic education. I have a job at the University of Freiburg, but it's for post-graduate students. I don't get so much involved in basic education."

I asked him about his work on behalf of modem music-his participation in festivals and in organizing concert programs.

"I'm a very poor organizer! I'm involved in many festivals, but in Basel I have my own series of concerts, called -Musical Forum', a chamber orchestra series. We try during the year to have unusual programming. it's very different from the Lockenhaus style-I'm involved with Lockenhaus but it's very, very different. No, it's with also a symphony orchestra and mixing chamber pieces with very large-scale pieces. And we do free 'PreConcerts' with musical commentaries in connection to the upcoming pieces. I think programming is too often a sort of 'supermarket' business: They just take something off the shelf because they need it at the time or the 'package' has the right color. Most of the programs you see make no sense. A program has to be like a composition, with a beginning and an end. Every piece has to be able to breathe and not be suffocated by the others. One can shed light on the other. It's why I like so much to mix old and new together. You hear them both in a different way like this."

"Do you have a philosophy or method of introducing new works to audiences?"

"Sometimes it's important not to throw a new piece at the face of the audience, but to try to give them some hints or help or play a few excepts before doing the whole performance. They can then have a 'deja-vu' feeling later. You try to play a piece which can open a door to the other pieces. New works are the only reason for existence of the musician today, yes. He has absolutely no fight to be when he is not part of the actual culture. Otherwise, he is a mummy and should be put in alcohol in the glass! Many times when you see players who do 'authentic' instruments, you find they are much more interested in modern music than those average middle-of-the-road musicians. They do not know anything about old music interpretation, but they know even less about modern music. But those who are really interested in getting to the spirit of a period-maybe the Renaissance or 18th century-but they are also interested in our century."

What about the oboe itself, I ask him. how has it changed since the early 19th century?

"I think since 1870 the oboe hasn't changed very much. In the early 19th century it was quite different. The so-called 'classical oboe' is similar nowadays to the Viennese oboe-with a few more keys. But it is really the oboe of 1820-1830. The actual oboe we have was completed more or less in 1870; then later they added a few octave keys, but no basic things. The 'authentic' instrument of Schumann's time, say, had a much lighter, transparent sound. More recently bigger halls and our obsession for loud sounds has meant playing with a much bigger, 'fatter' sound. You really have to make more noise to get to the ears of people in a 4,000-seat hall. Humanity may go deaf in a hundred years!"

"You refer to Schumann's time, Were the Romantic composers especially fascinated with the oboe? Was there a very extensive body of solo oboe music before that, say before 1849?"

"There had been until 1820," replies Holliger. "This had been a time when composers had been able to write for newly discovered, newly developed instruments. C.P.E. Bach could write for the new fortepianos. Beethoven could write for the new Broadwood pianos. They were exploring new possibilities. But today no instrument makers are so much interested in developing new kinds of instruments. They want perhaps to perfect the traditional instruments. Anyway, when new instruments like the clarinet and the valve-horn were perfected, they took over the interest of the composers. The Romantic ideal of sound was not so tuned to the clear-cut oboe sound anymore. The composers liked the clarinet's soft lower register, you see. They made friends with important clarinetists like Spohr with Helmstedt, Weber and Mendelssohn with Bermann, and Brahms wrote his clarinet pieces because of his fascination with Muhlfeld. But this meant the oboe literature itself was reduced to a sort of virtuoso literature."

Indeed, I wonder, it seems that many of the prominent oboe pieces of the day, like the Schumann Romances, Opus 94, were more frequently performed in alternative versions for strings or clarinet than on the oboe.

"I think the publisher was afraid of not selling enough copies when music would be only played by wind players. Because solo playing by winds was not so fashionable. (One exception, however, was in the Leipzig Gewandhaus at the time. Most of the wind players had been solo players. When you look at Schumann's musical reviews there had been a lot of wind concertos, even a Trombone Concerto by Ferdinand David! But mostly by minor composers like Kalliwoda.) From the start Schumann implied that all his wind pieces could be played on other instruments. The horn piece was even first performed on violin and not on the horn. The clarinet piece has also an alternative violin part. The cello part was then added by somebody else. And the oboe 'Romances' are for hautbois or violin-it even says that on the title page. The pieces 'In Folkstyle' are written for cello or violin."

These works are included in what remains my own favorite among Mr. Holliger's many albums, a program released in 1980 with pianist Alfred Brendel of several Schumann works. In his program notes Mr. Holliger called the Opus 94 the most important works for oboe in the Romantic period.

"Schumann did his pieces for oboe because of his isolation and impractical behavior as a composer. He had no oboist to play the pieces. It was once played at his home straight through by the local Dresden oboist but it was never performed in public until probably 1867 or something by an oboist called Lunden, with Carl Reinecke at the piano. And it was played by Joachim on the violin. But there was no oboist around, ready to play this. But it was published in 1850, I think."

He pauses, a broad grin gently animating his features. His eyes twinkle behind the steel-rimmed glasses.

"I am a Schumann-obsessed musician since the age of 15," he smiles. "And he is still the main composer in my life. Not only the oboe music but I am also conducting as much Schumann as I can. But the album with Brendel came out of a idea Brendel had. First he wanted me to play some Schubert songs on the oboe and he wanted to record them with me. But I think it's a great idea that I didn't do this. I could do it with some later songs, maybe some Schumann songs, but with Schubert I was not really convinced. And then I told him, I think it's much better to do some "songs without words" by Schumann. I took over the idea of the multiple possibilities of instruments which Schumann already foresaw. All the pieces are also playable on one common instrument, on the violin, so I thought I don't do any harm to those pieces when I take a common instrument-the oboe-for them." I think we began the project in 1983 or so, in Henry Wood Hall in London. At the time I think it was the only project like it, but now, there are many.

You even performed the 'Night Piece.'

"The 'Abendlied,' which is already transcribed by Joachim for violin! It's originally from a group of twelve pieces for piano, four hands [Opus 85]."

Tell me some more about your Schumann interests.

"I take him as seriously as a composer as I would take Bach or Mozart. And I would take his late output as very great music, and not just something from an ill brain. This is the tendency very much in the last ten years, to take also the last pieces and see them as great music. Before, you could reread and reread again the same stupid prejudices transported from one book to the other about Schumann. Even now there's more light shed on the relation between Robert and Clara through the publication of the original texts of the letters. They had been censored and made up by Clara Schumann. And now also the new biographies of Clara by Dr. Nancy Reich and Eva Weissweiler. The Weissweiler is quite revolutionary what comes out-although it's been seriously criticized by Clara Schumann scholars.

"Oh, yes, surely. It's in a very rough, aggressive tone, but the content is not arguable because it's all based on sources. I think also the psychoanalytic study by Peter Ostwald /Schumann: The Inner Voice, 1985/ sheds very new light."

Have you conducted a lot of Schumann?

"I'm conducting a lot. I've done many performances of the entire Manfred music."

How do audiences take to the Manfred when you perform it? It's so rare to hear it complete.

"It's probably not enough music for them. There's a lot of text and after the Overture the pieces are very short and also Schumann called it only a 'folio,' music wrapped around the text. He didn't want to overweigh the music. I did my own adaptation with my brother, a theater producer. We retranslated a lot of it. Schumann, unfortunately, used a very poor translation of the Byron text. There is a very, very beautiful tape recording on Bayerische Rundfunk of Rafael Kubelik with the whole Manfred and he offered it to Deutsche Gramophone for free. And they refused it and then he stepped out of the office and never did any more recordings for Deutsche Gramophone because he was so offended! And now next year I will do more Schumann-a set of concert performances of Geneva-the whole opera-and a lot of other choral pieces, like Nachtlied. I just did it last February in Helsinki, together with my own piece, a sort of Schumann portrait, 'Gesaenge de Fruehe', for large orchestra, chorus, and tape."

I do a double take. Schumann's last piano cycle, composed when he was ill in 1853, was the Gesaenge de Fruhe (Songs of the Dawn), based on some texts by his friend Bettina von Arnim and the poet, Holderlin.

"My work is also based on these texts," Holliger explains. "I haven't recorded it yet but many times I have performed it. I use the first piece of the original piano cycle as an a cappella chorus. There are also other quotes, from the Violin Concerto, of the Requiem for Mignon, of the second Concert Piece for piano, and the 'Geister' Variations, and so on. It's a sort of analysis of Schumann in the moment of his death. I wrote it three years ago, in 1988. 1 haven't performed it in the United States, although I plan now to do it in Cleveland next year. But we can't yet find a chorus able to sing it! It's a very, very difficult piece. It is only possible to be performed by a very professional chorus."

Have you incorporated Schumann's music into your own music before?

"In a very early piece of mine, 'Erde und Himmel,' a little cantata for tenor and five instruments. It was my first published piece in 1961-62. There I had a little quote from Schumann exactly in the center of the piece, from the song, 'Zwielicht.' Nobody knew it was there, but it was."

What is it about Schumann that attracts you?

"First of all, it is the whole person which has a very, very great fascination. But also his technique of composition, his way of-I think he was the real revolutionary of the 19th century. His way of nonlinear development of music-to stick with a little cell of four or three notes; and then turning it into a spiral development, moving on and on, never straight, always with this circular motion (which is much closer to baroque music, like the Bach Inventions). Many, many of his pieces are this way. Like the No. 2 of 'Folk Style' set, which is in sevenbar phrases revolving back upon themselves. You can analyze the whole Manfred music just on(hums the first statement in the second bar). When you look at the Fourth Symphony...

... And there is so much of this 'cryptographic writing,' which is so close to myself."

What do you mean by that?

"It's a kind of musical cryptography. Coded messages. You think of the famous 'Carnaval' for piano, based on the note combinations of A, S, C, H. But there are less well-known examples. Look at the three notes, F, A, E, that he uses in the first of the oboe 'Romances."'

He pauses and I prod him to talk more about this remarkable work. At first he is reluctant to discuss things like his interpretive feelings, but he gradually warms up and his emotions break through his habitual reserve. "Music is a language itself and you can't transcribe it into words. The music itself is the language and it has no meaning in words. But I try." He pauses, lips pursed, musing over unheard music. Then--

"At the beginning a minstrel starts playing three chords on his lute and then starts reciting a ballad in a very free, recitativo style (hums opening measures). 'Here, in olden time, etc.' And then when it is finished there comes a regular, flowing motion in the piano and then starts sort of an aria, song-like music. But then at the end it comes into a sort of a ghostly-he writes 'scherzando,' but you have the feeling you don't know where you are. It's sort of a twilight thing, with those forte off-beats and it's sort of frightening. And then it goes back to this recitativo as in the beginning, but with much more regular pulse in the piano. In the Coda there is a sort of heartbeat in the A and then the chromatic motion (hums again)-it's really 'falling' music, which has what we say 'falsucht'-you have the urge to fall down, to sink; and this music has very much the urge to sink. And then the piano takes the part of the oboe and the oboe the part of the piano and triggers a very dissonant chord, a diminished 7th with the A and goes into a sort of cadenza-all based on this falling motive. It comes to a standstill. Not to a peace, but to a sort of frozen standstill. just it stops. (hums) All the piece is based on three notes-F, A, E. In the end again it comes. It's 'Frei aber einsam', the 'F-A-E' mark which soon will unite Schumann, Brahms, and Joachim."

He pauses reflectively, running his fingers through his hair. "I use my own 'musical alphabets' too. It's nothing he invented. It's a sort of cabalistic tradition present also in Bach or in Zelenka and Josquin and a lot of older music."

As our time draws to an end we talk for a while about the modern works Mr. Holliger has premiered and which have been composed for him. Does he have any favorites?

He laughs gently. "There have been so many. Probably the best piece I have is the Concerto by Elliott Carter, and the Sequenza by Berio, which is still very much alive after 30 years and became a repertoire piece for many oboists and the double concertos for oboe and harp (played by my wife, Ursula) by Lutoslawski and Henze and Krenek, and concertos by Schnittke-" He gestures at the air around him. He's on a roll. "Lots of pieces, things by Stockhausen, Penderecki, and a lot of Swiss composers as well. Soon I will premiere a new piece by Franco Donatoni, written for me through a joint commission by societies in Boston and Los Angeles."

People talk about you as the only full-time oboe soloist/performer in the world. Is that an especially difficult kind of career to maintain?

"I never have any difficulty, and the oboe playing is only a quarter of my activity. In Europe we have a couple of oboists who do a lot of solo performing. Perhaps it's more unusual in this country. Probably I'm too stupid to play the violin or cello, so I choose this more primitive instrument. My oboe for me is only a walking stick!"

He laughs at the thought. But as he packs his knapsack to leave, I can't help reflecting what a noble thing it is to walk leaning on such a stick.

(John Tibbetts is a broadcast journalist and educator based in Kansas City who covers the arts. His work has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Musical America, and Opera News. He teaches at the University of Kansas, Lawrence.)

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