(Editor's note: This article on Heinz Holliger appeared in the February 1st issue of the Wall Street Journal. It is reprinted here with permission.)
Duk-duk-duk. Squawk. Phhrrreww. The percussive pops, raucous squeaks and eerie, high-register whistles that oboe virtuoso Heinz Holliger coaxes out of his instrument while performing an avant-garde work are as familiar to his fans as his mellifluous Mozart. Whatever he plays, his sensitive phrasing, extraordinary breath control and clear, focused tone are always in evidence. (So are his peculiar stances on stage--sudden knee bends and other movements that seem better suited to calisthenics than concertos.)
But the remarkable Mr. Holliger, whom critics have dubbed the undisputed Paganini of the oboe, has a problem. Much of his artistry is expended on second-rate works by obscure composers of the past.
"Nothing we have from the 19th century compares to what Brahms or Weber wrote for the clarinet," laments the 45-year-old Swiss musician, a nervously intense, bespectacled man with thinning brown hair. Although the oboe enjoyed considerable popularity during the Baroque era, subsequent composers ignored it in favor of the piano, violin or newly invented clarinet. Its potential repertoire was further diminished by some quirky twists of fate: Beethoven penned an oboe concerto in 1792 that has vanished without a trace; Debussy died before writing the oboe trio he envisioned.
Rather than wallow in clarinet envy, however, Mr. Holliger has helped expand the oboe's literature. He has resurrected little-known Baroque concertos. A composer himself -- he has written music extending the instrument's capabilities via tricky tonguings, chords and notes in the oboe stratosphere. Others may have pioneered such effects, as Mr. Holliger modestly points out, but no living oboist equals his ability to produce them with such ease. For example, using a technique called circular breathing, he is able to blow into the reed and inhale fresh air simultaneously, thereby sustaining a tone without an audible break in the melodic line. (The method, he relates, was employed by players of ancient Greece's double reed proto-oboe, the aulos, and is also used by glass blowers when they force air into a blob of molten glass.) In fact his prodigious skills and consummate artistry have inspired contemporary composers such as Luciano Berio, Hans Werner Henze and Karlheinz Stockhausen to dedicate over 60 new works to him, many of which he has premiered.
All this music making requires a plentiful supply of reeds--two slender pieces of cane joined together and inserted into the oboe's top joint that vibrate when the player expels air. Like his colleagues, Mr. Holliger is well versed in the intricacies of reed preparation. He purchases cane from suppliers in Avignon in the south of France, where it is still gathered by hand, and stores it for two to three years until it is sufficiently dry. "If you tap the cane on a stone or on a glass table," he explains, "you can determine its quality. If the sound is dull, the cane is too green. If the sound is bright and high, then the cane will be more consistent." When the reed is ready for carving, a student of his does the preliminary gouging and cutting; then Mr. Holliger takes over for the final shaping.
"Oboists are usually shocked," he maintains, "but I can usually make two or three reeds in as little as 15 minutes. However, I also spend a week 'blowing in' the reed; I play it daily for half an hour, change it slightly and put it aside. Reeds that play nicely from the first minute die in two days; they lose their tension. Reeds that are more stable can be used for up to 20 performances."
A reed that gives way during a concert is the typical oboist's nightmare, but Mr. Holliger refuses to divulge such horror stories. "Most oboists spend too much time talking about problems with reeds," he declares, his voice rising to a mezzo-forte. "Really, I simply cannot understand this obsession. The reed doesn't make the music; the player has to do that."
In addition to the 80 to 90 annual concerts he gives in Europe and the U.S., Mr. Holliger enjoys a prolific recording career--he has 22 albums currently in print on the Philips label alone. His latest disc, just shipped to stores by Vox, is also his first for an American label. The digital recording teams the oboist with the Cincinnati Symphony under its music director, Michael Gielen, in performance of the Oboe Concerto by Richard Strauss and the Double Concerto for Oboe, Harp and Chamber Orchestra by the contemporary Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski.
Mr. Holliger is joined in the Lutoslawski by his harpist wife, Ursula. The Double Concerto was written for, and premiered by, the couple in 1980. Its first movement juxtaposes frenzied bee-swarming sounds for orchestra with passages for the soloists, both of whom turn in exemplary performances. But despite their talents, the atonal work fails to catch fire until its finale. Then thrusting Stravinskyan rhythms and dramatic interplay between the oboe, harp and battery of unpitched percussion instruments bring it alive.
The Strauss is a nostalgic work, written four years before the composer's death in 1949. It hovers between echoes of his tone poems and a tribute to Mozart. Maestro Gielen, one of today's more provocative conductors, takes a lean approach stressing its classical elements. Those who like their Strauss with a touch of decadence will prefer the warmer sound and higher emotional temperature of Mr. Holliger's recording under Edo de Waart on the Philips label. But Mr. Holliger's seamless, expressive phrasing in the elegiac, Andante inspires the free flow of euphoric adjectives. It is absolutely entrancing.