Oboe playing in America today has lost its vitality. It cannot, in fairness, be called stagnant. Neither can it be described as being at a standstill any more than the rat on a treadmill can be considered to be at a standstill. After all, things appear to be happening. There's much activity! Little feet (and fingers) are scurrying. But there is no direction, no forward movement and very little imaginative creativity. Instead, one is too often confronted with sterile, cold, forced, hard, insensitive and, above all, incredibly dull playing.
Instead of developing sensitive artists who happen to play the oboe we seem to be producing a breed of insensitive oboe wielding competitors - the oboe playing equivalent of the organization man, driven by a desperate determination to be "successful" at all costs rather than by a love of music and the instrument. And the cost has been too high. It has been, paradoxically, the very success being striven for.
How is it that we now find ourselves at this deplorable state of affairs. Ironically, it has come about because we, collectively, have become over-confident and oboistically narrow-minded. We have forgotten, or refuse to accept the fact that there are other schools of playing, other approaches to the oboe, other methods of making reeds, which deserve and have at least as wide an acceptance as our own. (The irony is in the fact that "our own" so called American School is simply a composite of the imported German and French product influenced by the "melting pot" mentality which called for a certain loss of identity and personality in favor of a more blending sectional approach.)
We are taught to laugh at the English vibrato, smirk at the German sound, ridicule the French brightness. We have been brainwashed into a sense of self-satisfied complacency by certain teaching elements who have preached that any deviation from this gospel - the narrow, up-tight, quivering, nervous, un-lovable gospel - would be the worst kind of unacceptable heresy. Instead of rewarding creativity, individuality, imagination and character, these qualities have become punishable offenses.
This rigidity and complacency - this closed door policy - this dogmatic stultified approach - has turned the American oboist into a technocratic robot who has lost his heart and soul, not to mention his sense of musical involvement. Whereas the flute vibrates with vitality and beauty, the oboe quivers in agony, whereas the clarinet is rich and warm, the oboe is thin and tight, whereas the bassoon is mellow and healthy, the oboe is pale and sick.
The solution can only be found in a new philosophical approach to the oboe. An openness and a willingness to accept different ideas and conceptions from our own must be adopted. A desire to liberate ourselves from the restrictive attitudes imposed upon us by certain elements of the past generation is needed. We desperately need warmth, freedom and beauty of sound, a round natural, vocal vibrato, and, above all, style, character, and involvement.
The American oboist is being branded as an in-bred, dull and insensitive technician by most of the world's orchestral musicians and many of the world's finest conductors. That this is a true assessment is borne out by the fact that in recent years in order to fill any 1st oboe vacancy it has been necessary to audition at least 40 or 50 players to find even one or two acceptable candidates. Technically, practically every applicant is more than adequate. Le Tombeau de Couperin poses no problems. La Scala di Seta can be done at any speed in any articulation requested. Tchaikovsky's 4th can be done in one breath, etc. etc.!! Yet, only one or two acceptable candidates out of 40 or 50. Something is desperately wrong and everyone, except the oboists, knows what it is. Now, I think it's time for the oboists to find out.