Michel Piguet
The Baroque Performance Institute e at the Oberlin Conservatory, Oberlin, Ohio, provides a unique opportunity for study with leading exponents of baroque performance techniques.
James Caldwell, the brilliant young professor of oboe at the conservatory directs the Institute; but referring to himself as "the world's most reluctant baroque oboist" at the Institute he indulges his great love for the viols, which he shares with his wife, Catherina Meints, a cellist in the Cleveland Orchestra. He had assembled a faculty of great distinction to spend three weeks in July at Oberlin. They included singers Jean Hakes and Russell Oberlin, keyboard players Albert Fuller and James Weaver, and August Wenzinger, virtuoso viol player and artistic director, as well as Michel Piguet, the brilliant baroque oboist.
In a short visit with Piguet, I found him a man of great personal charm and serenity, continually manipulating a set of "worry beads" in the manner of an Athenian businessman (his wife is from Greece). He is excited at the great interest in baroque playing and the eagerness for finding always more authentic approaches to it. His work now is almost exclusively devoted to teaching and performing on the antique instruments, though he was trained on the modern oboe and still owns one.
His work at Oberlin included daily master classes and occasional lectures - one on articulation and another on intonation were particularly valuable for the depth of scholarship and research they reveal.
During my short visit to Oberlin. I heard Piguet perform Daphne, a 1639 work for recorder of Jakob van Eyck - Piguet is a virtuoso recorder player as well as an oboist. He also participated in orchestral work and later in the season performed the J. S. Bach G Minor Sonata and the "Wedding" Cantata. Though best known in the US for his Odyssey record of various sonatas (in which he uses his Rottenburgh oboe), he considers it one of his less pleasing and much prefers some of his work for the Deutsche Gramaphone Archive series.
Monsieur Piguet will make concert appearances in the US in late October and early November of 1974, giving performances on both recorder and oboe. This is a splendid opportunity to hear this artist lecture as well as perform. Inquiries as to his availability may be directed editor of this journal.