This article first appeared in the July 1991 issue of the Gramophone magazine. It is reprinted here with permission of the editors.

When I sit down with Paul Goodwin at a table in a pub just around the corner from Henry Wood Hall in South London, where he has been recording all afternoon with The English Concert, the first thing I notice is a bandage around his left arm. "I fell off my bike," he explains. "It's something to do with recording the Mozart C major Oboe Concerto. Before Michel Piguet did it he was run over." The injury does not seem to have disturbed Goodwin's playing too much, but those readersthere can be few left-who are still cynical about the old, home-spun reputation of period-style performers might have allowed themselves a smile at the mention of a bike. Presumably Goodwin wears sandals and is on a strict macrobiotic diet?

Well, even if those things are true (and I confess I did not notice the footwear, though he eagerly consumed a ham roll later in our conversation), there is nothing remotely crankish about him. He is typical of the younger breed of baroque and classical musicians, confident of the appropriateness of his approach to music-making and of his own professionalism. For someone whose job is handling an instrument whose baroque and classical varieties have often been, let us be frank, badly played in years past that is a considerable attainment. "Yes, it's true that in the early days [of period style performance] there was a lot of not altogether perfect playing," he says with diplomacy, "but I think that critics are sometimes a bit out of date when they attack baroque oboists these days. Certainly I'm conscious that everyone's cars are now on the oboes because of that reputation, so we all have to play extra well. The standard's improved immeasurably in recent times. There are lots of exciting young woodwind players coming along, but it's true that there are still only a few oboists doing most of the good work."

Like most musicians in his field, Goodwin has a sound knowledge of the history of his instrument. For his record for Archiv of classical concertos with The English Concert, he plays a copy by the American maker Paul Hailperin of a two-keyed classical oboe of the kind used in Germany between about 1760 and 1790. "It's one of a couple in the country. There are very few good, playable originals. It's so difficult to make good copies." Why? "It's a question of the narrow bore. From the two-keyed baroque oboe to the classical instrument there's a transition from a

wide bore and hence a fatter sound to a narrower instrument. To play you use the same fingerwork but the sound carries more, and it's brighter. It's to do with the transition from colla parte writing to more soloistic writing in the orchestra. The concertos of the period use the higher register of the instrument too. It's a difficult problem for a maker and a player to get the top notes to speak properly. It's a bit like vocalizing. You have to prepare your body for the top notes, to think about the pitch. But it's also very flexible in dynamics and tone-quality. Curiously, after the classical oboe the Beethoven oboe reverts to a wider bore, because of the increasing need for homogeneity within the orchestra. But of course we're talking about the Germanic variety of instrument. In France in the eighteenth century there was a completely separate development, with different key systems."

Goodwin chose the concertos for his disc himself, and is particularly delighted to have been able to include the C.P.E. Bach Concerto in E flat. "It's a rarely played piece, but it's a superb example of his work. The first movement's first theme begins with a repeated single note, and it's a good illustration of how Quantz, in his treatise On Playing the Flute, instructs players to treat such themes. It's an exercise in articulation and colour of course. But then the rest of the movement is extraordinarily daring and exploratory. The slow movement's nine minutes of melancholic expression, beautifully ornamented too, and the last movement has wonderful bursts of oboe solos. What about Lebrun's D minor Concerto? "oh, that's the best of the Mannheim school really." [Lebrun was appointed to the Mannheim orchestra as an oboist at the age of 15 in 1767.] It's in a dark and passionate key, and it's full of dark changes of mood. It's not as crazy a piece as the C.P.E. Bach though! And of course I've included the Mozart because it's predominantly a light, sunny piece. I'm trying really to take a new look at something famous."

But what other treasures lie buried? "Oh, there's quite a lot. Lebrun is known to have composed six oboe concertos. Heinz Holliger has recorded them all. There's another C.P.E. Bach concerto, in B flat, and a bit more classical and conventional than the E flat. And there are six concertos by Johann Christian Fischer, who wrote music for the entertainments in Vauxhall Gardens. He's a more interesting kind of J.C. Bach!" What about music of a later epoch? "The oboe goes out of fashion as a solo instrument in the nineteenth century because of the rise in the popularity of the clarinet. But there are one or two things, like the Weber Concertino for oboe and wind band, the Donizetti Concerto for cor anglais, the Hummel Introduction and Variations. Actually it's curious, but because the oboe was more of an amateur's instrument in the nineteenth century, there are many more surviving sophisticated treatises about how to play it from that period than there are from the baroque and classical eras. I read treatises for other instruments to give me an insight into style of interpretation. Spohr's violin treatise is useful for the later eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, for instance, but there's also Quantz's and Hotteterre's flute treatises. Specifically for the oboe, for the French manner there's Poncein's work from 1700 and for the English Prelleur's The Modern Musick Master [1731]. Garnier, Brod, Vogt-yes, there are quite a few useful works."

Curiously, when Goodwin came from Nottingham University to the Guildhall School of Music to undertake postgraduate study, it was as a composer and student of contemporary oboe techniques. Largely due to the influence of the flautist Stephen Preston, a teacher in the early music department there, he decided to investigate the baroque oboe, and soon found himself in Vienna, studying with Jurg Schaeftlein, and in Salzburg, where he attended Nikolaus Harnoncourt's early music class. "Obviously I had to make a decision, because you just can't play both contemporary and baroque oboe to the highest possible level. Everything about the two instruments is different. But yes, of course I miss new music." He was lucky to benefit from some inspiring teachers, and now passes on what he has learnt by teaching at the Royal College. "It would be nice to see the colleges really take on early music. The colleges are still very traditional and reluctant, but there's so much work available to students who leave able to play baroque and classical instruments. And of course studying these techniques helps towards a closer understanding of the music itself. There was a time when Trevor Wye at the Royal Northern College would send all the flute students there to Lisa Beznosiuk to study baroque flute for a term. That sort of attitude is so important." And his contemporary modern oboists? "Actually people like Celia Nicklin, Tess Miller, Nick Daniels are all marvelous players, very understanding of eighteenth-century techniques. Nick runs a Summer School at Ramsgate, and in recent times I've been there every year to teach and give a lecture-recital. At first most of the students think I'm a bit of a crank, of course, but then, when I play, say, Telemann, they see not only that I have a different and possibly more suitable instrument for the music, but that what I can do with it makes it much more interesting." With that, we have come full circle and order another pint of beer. Real, of course.

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