Editor's Note: Witold Lutoslawski's new concerto for oboe and harp is one of the most significant contributions to the repertoire in recent years. It was given its first performances in the United States in Minneapolis in February, 1982, followed by performances in New York, Boston, and Washington. It has been performed many times in Europe, most recently in Paris as part of the 17th Festival Festival de Paris on September 15, with the composer conducting as part of an all-Lutoslawski evening. The orchestra was the Paris Orchestra; the venue, the Salle Pleyel. The description of the concerto is from the program book of the Minnesota Orchestra, reprinted here with kind permission of the orchestra; the press reviews are also reprinted with permission. The interview with Heinz Holliger from the March 7 New York Times is reprinted with kind permission
If there were a prize for modesty in the face of extreme critical praise, oboist Heinz Holliger would no doubt be a contender for top honors. Generally conceded to be this generation's finest player of that notoriously difficult instrument and perhaps the only oboist to have made an international success as a touring soloist, Mr. Holliger is about the farthest thing imaginable from a jaded virtuoso.
Shown a press release hailing him as "the world's greatest oboist," Mr. Holliger gives an embarrassed smile and endeavors to explain that he is merely a conscientious performer who simply is concerned with doing justice to his music. New York concertgoers will have an opportunity to judge for themselves this coming Friday evening, when Mr. Holliger will appear in Carnegie Hall as soloist with the Minnesota Orchestra under the direction of Neville Marriner.
"All I really want to do," Mr. Holliger said at the outset of his current American tour, "is to play in a way that expresses my personality and my understanding of the work. I don't try to analyze myself too much." At the age of 42 he has been playing the oboe for more than three decades, yet he cannot say what it is that sets him apart from his peers "I have no secrets at all. I just play as I feel."
His repertory ranges from the early Baroque to avant-garde contemporary, and he does not believe the oboe to be as fearsome an instrument as everyone says it is. He does admit, though, that not everyone is automatically suited to the instrument. "Your lips must be the right size," he said.
Mr. Holliger has been playing the oboe since he was a boy of 10 growing up in the town of Langenthal, Switzerland. His musical studies had begun five years earlier on the piano, an instrument to which he devoted a considerable amount of time and which he still plays for his own enjoyment. But it was the oboe that captured his fascination. At the Bern Conservatory he studied piano, oboe and composition, and later on he did advanced work in Paris with the famed oboe pedagogue Pierre Pierlot. Major competition victories followed, including first prize at the Munich International Competition in 1961, which propelled him to world-wide recognition.
Mr. Holliger is regretful that there is virtually no oboe repertory from the Romantic era, which he confesses is his favorite musical period.
"Until about 1820 the instrument was quite fashionable," he said, "and oboe virtuosos traveled all around Europe But in the 19th century the oboe disappeared into the orchestra and had no real function as a solo instrument. And, more significantly, there weren't any good soloists to inspire the composers."
Surprisingly, Mr. Holliger plays Baroque music, of which there is a lot, on a modern instrument which has quite a different timbre from the original period instrument. Mr. Holliger recognizes the inherent superiority of the Baroque oboe for Baroque music, but feels that he would be unacceptably compromised if he were to switch back and forth between the different instruments because the technical demands of the two differ greatly.
Nonetheless, Mr. Holliger considers himself faithful to the requirements of authentic performance practice, no matter what the period. "I try very hard to pay attention to ornamentation, which is one of my major concerns while playing," he said.
Another way in which Mr. Holliger adapts to varying repertory is through his choice of reeds, each of which is designed to produce a certain kind of sound. "With Strauss, for example," he said, "you have to cope with complex orchestral writing through which the oboe must project. You have to choose a reed that gives enough vibration to produce a very wide dynamic range. Otherwise, you will be overpowered by the orchestra. But for a Baroque sonata you might choose a much sweeter sounding reed that can blend with a harpsichord or a viola da gamba." He doesn't, however, spend an inordinate amount of time on reedmaking. "I try to be a musician, not a carpenter " he says.
With the Minnesota Orchestra this week he will play Hummel's Oboe Variations and, with his wife, Ursula as the other soloist, will participate in the first New York performance of Witold Lutoslawski's Double Concerto for Oboe, Harp and Orchestra. This work was written expressly for the Holligers. She is a concert harpist who has an independent career.
While performing takes up most of Mr. Holliger's time (he gives well over 100 concerts each year) his musical interests extend in other directions as well He devotes a good deal of energy to teaching graduate students at Freiburg, West Germany, and he conducts annually in Basel, where he makes his permanent home. Unlike many of today's instrumentalists, he has no plans to conduct full time. As conductor, he concentrates on the 19th century "so I can come in contact with completely different repertory."
Mr. Holliger is also a composer of some repute writing primarily in the summer when his schedule becomes less hectic. He composes for all media, but very sparingly for the oboe. His fondness is for the human voice, and he has written a pair of short operas and two brief opera scenes.
Mr. Holliger sees composing and performing as two parts of a unified whole. "They are so related to each other that I couldn't think of doing just one," he said. "I wouldn't compose as I do without being a performer, and I wouldn't perform without being a composer."
Mr. Holliger does not care for what he views as the widespread sameness in oboe playing throughout the world. He recognizes the existence of different national schools of oboe tradition, but thinks they have little meaning today. "It's not so much the 'school' but the player's character and personality which make the sound," he said.
Highly critical of the current cult of personality that increasingly surrounds many top soloists, Mr. Holliger does not see himself as having charisma or as actively seeking a vast popular following.
"Today everybody wants to give marks to performers -- this one is the best, or the fastest -- but I don't believe in this," he said. "I just want to be a good musician."
Born January 25, 1913, Warsaw; now living there.
Instrumentation: small group of strings, timpani xylophone, vibraphone, marimba, bells, assorted unpitched percussion, and solo oboe and harp.
The music is multi-faceted and just when it seems to be saying one thing, it is saying something else at the same time ... sometimes in contradiction. The titles of the movements -- Rapsodico -- Dolente -- Marcia/e e grotesco -- are only to be taken figuratively.-- Lutoslawski
In the accounts of many musical premieres -- works of Haydn, Beethoven and the late Romantics come to mind -- we learn that the audiences clamored for an encore of at least a single movement. This phenomenon being something of a rarity nowadays, it is refreshing to read in the London Times of Sunday, November 23, 1980, that the performance of Witold Lutoslawski's Double Concerto at the previous Wednesday's BBC Symphony Orchestra concert, under the composer's direction "was so enthusiastically received by the Festival Hall audience that the last movement was played again." Commissioned by Paul Sacher, to whom it is dedicated, the twenty-minute score had already received its world premiere at the Lucerne Festival in August of that year, shortly after its completion. These performances, under Neville Marriner, mark the American premiere.
Lutoslawski, the most eminent Polish composer of the generation immediately preceding Penderecki has written sparingly of the Double Concerto, which was conceived with Heinz and Ursula Holliger in mind. He notes: "The prospect of the piece being given by Paul Sacher and the Collegium Musicum with such famous virtuoso soloists was a great inspiration to me while I was working on the Concerto." Like others of his works -- mainly instrumental, and the principal orchestral opuses already presented here during the tenure of Stanislaw Skrowaczewski -- the Double Concerto reveals two chief characteristics of this highly original composer: a penchant for dramatic structures, and the merest flirtation with chance, for his aleatoric episodes are quickly brought under control. The compact score ranges through a variety of moods, from the fury of the orchestral prologue to the gentle cadenza that follows, to a dreamy slow movement and a humorous finale, the latter tinged with a sardonicism reminiscent of Prokofiev. Lutoslawski's language is atonal, though sections of his meticulously crafted music inevitably gravitate towards clearly perceived centers; his harmonic textures are freely devised, at times spreading across chords as vast as the freely pulsating twelve-note cluster of the opening string passage. But such densities are judiciously woven, and the composer has remarked: "Personally I do not like scores which leave me with a sensation not unlike that which follows overeating."
Labeled Rapsodico, a general enough title, the opening movement invites comparisons to Baroque procedure: an excited string tutti gives way to a cadenza for the solo pair, and the return of the string "ritornello," is interspersed with unsynchronized cadenza segments, not unlike the alternation of tutti and solo in the old concerto grosso. Eventually the soloists are drawn into the orchestral momentum, and there is counterpoint as well as cadenza. Finally a new element intrudes: percussion, and from here on drum strokes and terse percussion patterns signal structural divisions in the score. The music returns full-circle to the rushing excitement of the beginning; then, without pause, the texture is reduced to wisps of violin pizzicato, and the second movement is underway.
The soloists dominate the Dolente movement at once lyrical and -- in conjunction first with vibraphone and marimba, then with a variety of drumbeats (timpani, tomtoms and bongo) -- evocative of hazy nocturnal images. (Here, as in his early works, there is a hint of Bartok's influence.) The dreaminess of the coda, metrically ordered and quietly resigned, is suddenly burst upon by the rich triplet chords, plus a single drumstroke -- that unlock the finale and serve as its refrain.
The oboe pipes a jaunty tune, both sportive and sarcastic, to set the stage for a witty conclusion Marcia/e e grotesco. Delayed in its appearance until the second episode, the harp -- like its partner -- becomes entangled with both strings and percussion. A third episode, bringing both soloists into play sets them off against a battery of unpitched instruments, including woodblocks, in a fantasy episode that builds to the most virtuosic cadenza of the lot. A unison of drums punctuates elaborate display, whereupon the movement reverts to its opening refrain, a signpost for the concluding section in which the xylophone -- ultimately joined by bells -- unites with the soloists to form a fresh chamber texture within the context of strings. The exuberant bustle of the finish provides the proverbial happy ending towards which the entire work has been geared.
Trained as a pianist, violinist, composer and mathematician, and a member of the Polish army at the outbreak of World War 11, Lutoslawski has endured the trials that have beset Poles in the past decades of this century: he spent time as a German prisoner, he was forced to support himself as a cabaret pianist, he lost most of his early works during the war, and, immediately following, he was obliged to compose in a folkloristic manner under the dictates of socialist "realism." With the eventual thawing of ideological structures in 1956, he experimented with serialism and soon formed his own style -- atonal, expressive and colorful, with roots in central European tradition. By the mid-60's, Lutoslawski's works -- the Funeral Music and Venetian Games, for instance -- are performed internationally, and he began to conduct and lecture abroad. In the United States, he has taught at Tanglewood, Dartmouth and Texas State University. His many honors include honorary doctorates from the University of Chicago and Warsaw University both in 1973, and three first prizes at the UNESCO Competition in Paris.
-- Mary Ann Feldman
It's not very often that a Twin Cities audience is privileged to hear a musical instrument played as well as it can be played. Sure, we hear a number of fine violinists and pianists and cellists every season -- pop international artists.
But when someone like oboist Heinz Holliger puts double reed to lips, as he did Wednesday night in Orchestra Hall in one new piece and one old, it becomes suddenly apparent what the very best of music making sounds like. There is an absolute command of the instrument. There is musicality of unarguable, overwhelming rightness. There is virtuosity verging on athletic prowess. There is a breathtaking (albeit low- keyed) showmanship. In terms of the oboe, it doesn't get any better than Heinz Holliger.
In the first piece, Holliger was joined by his harpist wife, Ursula, Neville Marriner (back for his one midwinter program at Orchestra Hall) and the Minnesota Orchestra. It was the U.S. premiere of Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski's Double Concerto for Oboe, Harp and Chamber Orchestra the orchestra's most significant premiere this season. This double concerto is an exceptional work in several ways: As a showpiece for oboe it can have a few equals in the contemporary repertoire. And although largely atonal and occasionally aleatoric it is colorful, insistently dramatic and quite coherent, like some latter day concerto grosso, its progress is easily followed. As a consequence, in spite of the toughness of the idiom, it's fairly accessible.
As fine as Ursula Holliger and Marriner's contributions were, the piece belonged to the Swiss oboist, who flew from the fantastically fluent passage work of the first movement through the rich, morose Lyricism of the slow movement to the manic and piercing militarism of the finale. This was simply incredible playing.
After intermission, Holliger returned with an obscure classical cream puff, Hummel's Introduction, Theme and Variations for Oboe and Orchestra. And here, where unbridled acrobatics and long-breathed melodicism held complete sway Holliger made an even bigger impact. It was playing that had to be heard to be appreciated. Anyone who cares about great musicianship should do whatever they can to track down tickets for Friday's repeat performance in Orchestra Hall, or Saturday evening's performance in O'Shaughnessy Auditorium.
The Minnesota Orchestra's subscription concerts this week are notable not only for the return of Neville Marriner to the podium but for the local debut of the renowned oboist Heinz Holliger in the American premiere performances of the Double Concerto for Oboe, Harp and Chamber Orchestra by Witold Lutoslawski.
The Swiss-born Holliger will play the Lutoslawski Concerto for the final three dates on the orchestra's spring tour -- his wife, Ursula Holliger playing the solo harp part. He is less known in the U.S. than in Europe, where he is a certifiable star of the concert stage. Holliger's many recordings and his increasing number of concerts in this country are gradually changing that picture, however. It was obvious after his Wednesday night performance at Orchestra Hall Wednesday: This musician's celebrity status is more than just the work of the publicity mills. His technique and facility -- daring is really the word with so wayward an instrument as the oboe -- are astonishing, whether expressed in the rigorous avant-garde mode of Lutoslawski or the diverting early-Romantic pleasantries of Hummel (the Introduction, Theme and Variations in F Major).
Holliger has that "star" quality that keeps listeners on the edge of their seats wondering what bold feat he will amaze with next. But his musicianship, his taste, his sense of style -- quite different matters -- are just as obvious.
The subtle dynamic nuances he brought to bear in the first variation of the Hummel, the seamless legato he infused into the third -- always stated in Holliger's uniquely big, vibrant -- tone this is the work of a virtuoso bent on doing more than simply wow an audience with his technique.
Much, of course, in terms of sheer technique is demanded from the oboe in the Lutoslawski, which had its premiere in Switzerland in 1980: extremities of both pitch and dynamics and some rather odd tonal production in the finale. But much of it is not all that odd or far out these days. Lutoslawski, one of Poland's major living composers, doesn't seem to be searching for new instrumental techniques here. Nearly everything of that sort seems to have been done by now, anyway. He seems, rather, to be interested in setting up interesting dialogues between his two solo instruments in relation to the other instruments.
And it's a rather chatty affair between harp and oboe. It's as though the two go on a three-movement journey, and along the way they pick up the rhythms of their environment (percussion and strings): sometimes busy and whirling, sometimes, as in the middle movement, yearning and Lyrical.
The Concerto has no tonal center, but is not notably abrasive. It's dissonances, what there are of them, are used for dramatic effect. The piece, overall makes a strong impression on first hearing. The work has the qualities of a Samuel Beckett play: spare, stark, unearthly in tone, rather exotic in sound, somewhat abstract, but still with a real sense of character and feeling. Whether the work's effects are all on the surface -- one suspects not -- only repeated listenings will confirm or deny.