In response to your request for an article on oboists and orchestras in the Argentine Republic, I am happy to do my best. Since I am just an oboe player in one of the "interior" towns of the country, perhaps an oboist living in Buenos Aires, our capital city, might give a more general view. I have a knowledge of other orchestras in the country through comments of musicians who frequently travel on tour, or who are looking for better working conditions.
To understand our orchestras' development, it would be best to know something about our socio-political state. We occupy a big area in the southern extreme of South America. If you look on a map you will see how isolated from other countries we are. This means that news arrives late, and sometimes not at all. Travel, freight, and routine communication are all very expensive. Many Argentine artists prefer to establish themselves in Europe or in the USA to be "nearer to everything".
In our country we have just 30 million people, and a third live in the capital and its environs. Buenos Aires monopolizes 90 percent of commercial, cultural, and musical activity. There is at least one professional symphony orchestra in every capital city of every province with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Other capitals have some kind of chamber or string ensemble, and some have nothing at all. These orchestras have different levels of quality, and in many cases though the musicians get corresponding wages, they must often do other work to survive. In a few cities, not capitals of provinces, with enough population however, you may find a symphony orchestra; this is the case of my own town. I believe there must be some twenty orchestras in the whole country belonging to the state (that is to say, national, provincial, municipal, university, etc.) At this time our private universities have no orchestras. There are few recordings of Argentine orchestras; some Argentine composers' works have been recorded in the USA, and sometimes played for the first time in the USA. I think that was the case with the opera Bomarzo by the Argentine composer, Alberto Ginastera.
Have you heard of the "Colon" Theatre? It is one of most important lyric theatres in the world. It belongs to the Municipality of Buenos Aires. Besides its choruses, ballets, technicians, tailors, shoe ateliers, and its School of the Arts, it has two orchestras: the "Philharmonic" and the "Resident" ("Estable"). They each divide all the work, concerts, ballet and opera. Each one has Il 5 members, and the woodwinds have five players in each section.
There is another large orchestra in Buenos Aires, the "National" dependent on the Education Ministry. It performs at the Cervantes National Theatre. The National Broadcasting created a semi-professional youth orchestra some years ago.
The orchestras in the "interior" of the country are smaller groups with from 50 to 70 members. There is a certain poverty of string players and of certain brass instruments, like horns. There is an intense rivalry among these orchestras, with a tendency to "rob" the best players from each other. These semi-professional orchestras are reinforced by advanced music students who, at the same time, make their "first steps" into such a new world. The most advanced students travel to Buenos Aires in order to study with a famous teacher. Some of them remain there, tempted by higher wages, better job opportunities, or to work with foreign conductors.
Some cities have great old lyric theatres, a few of which present both ballet and opera. Some of them were built by immigrants from Italy and Spain. The surnames of most orchestral players here, are in the large part, Italian and Jewish.
"My" orchestra is in the city of Bahia Blanca (White Bay). This is a city with an important port through which our wheat production is shipped throughout the world. It was called "White Bay" by old Spanish sheepmen because of the salt on the beaches. It is in the Southeast of the Province of Buenos Aires, on the Atlantic Ocean, with a population of 200,000; we have a "sister city" in the USA, Jacksonville, Florida. We have a municipal theatre built around 1910. There is also a municipal chorus. The "Ballet del Sur" and our symphony orchestra are not municipal, but Provincial. I could say that ours is the southernmost orchestra in the world, but perhaps there is another in Chile, New Zealand, or Australia? But it surely is the southernmost in Argentina; so it serves all the south territory, called "Patagonia". It's usual for us to make short tours through small cities. We are used to performing concerts at the municipal theatre on Fridays, and then we repeat them the next day in a "club", a cinema, or a church in a small neighboring town. Sometimes we have opera, with companies from Buenos Aires or La Plata (the capital city of the Province of Buenos Aires). Because of the high cost, they only come once or twice a year. Our orchestra has some 60 members, 30 of whom are natives of our city, the other 30 have come from elsewhere. We have also one Chilean and one Bolivian. Forty players entered through public auditions; they can remain as long as the standard of their playing remains high. Twenty others are engaged by contract. Some of them are students at the Conservatory of Bahia Blanca. The orchestra was founded in 1959.
No oboes or bassoons are manufactured in our country. We must import everything from Europe or the United States. Most of our oboes come from France. It's very difficult to find an oboe for sale in a shop. Recently I traveled to Buenos Aires and only found two; both were student plastic models, costing about 600 dollars, which is, I believe, double the original
price. Teachers here usually don't care for plastic oboes; I think I'm the only teacher who accepts plastic cane, and that only for the first year of study. When a player decides to buy a new instrument, he orders it and waits (not so patiently!) for its arrival, sometimes brought along by a traveling friend or by another musician on tour.
(Editor's note: This "letter" was written in response to one from Lowry Riggins inquiring into the life and work of an oboist in a rather remote Part of the world. Some minor changes in structure have been made with the encouragement of the writer.)