Soni Ventorum in Rio de Janeiro, September 1973. Left to right: Arthur Grossman, bassoon; Felix Skowronek, flute; Arminda Villa-Lobos, William McColl, clarinet; and Laila Storch, oboe
Laila Storch of the Soni Ventorum Wind Quintet (in residence at the University of Washington at Seattle) gives some insights into musical life (and oboe-playing in particular) from two South American tours.
On two recent tours of South America with members of the Soni Ventorum Wind Quintet in 1972 and 1973, I experienced many musical, human, scenic and quite literally, Andean, high points.
I met oboists in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, La Paz, Lima, and Panama City, as well as in smaller places, and everywhere I was impressed by their main problem, namely the extreme difficulty they have in procuring cane and all necessary reed-making supplies. In not one city did there exist a music store or dealer who could provide any oboe equipment. Professional oboists depend on friends who travel, chance acquaintances, or the very unreliable mail to get a few pieces of cane, and students are in an even worse situation. A very eager and talented oboe student I met at the conservatory of the university at Salvador Bahia, had only a couple of totally worn out reeds and nothing in the line of music or study material. The same was true of the two oboists in La Paz who are still more isolated. They had studied for several years, but then the teacher left and with him their only source of supplies. They were desperately trying to keep going without cane or encouragement.
In the extreme south of Brazil in Porto Alegre, I met Walter Bianchi, whom I had not seen since 1949 during the year that he studied in Philadelphia with Tabuteau at the Curtis Institute. We had a good visit after his performance of the Britten "War Requiem" with the proficient Porto Alegre Symphony, and I was touched by his very vivid memory of all of us he had known in the States, Louis Rosenblatt, Larry Thorstenberg, John Mack, and others, and his eagerness for news of the oboe world. His only means of maintaining any contact were visits, such as that of the Philadelphia Orchestra several years ago.
I saw how much visits also meant to Benita Suarez Sanchez the young Spanish oboist of the Sao Paulo Symphony, who said he had modified his whole style of reed making as a result of meeting the New York Woodwind Quintet when they were in South America. I was able to pick up his reed and play with no difficulty at all, and found his approach quite unusual in an area still largely under the influence of an older Italian school of playing.
In Lima, a most helpful colleague, Gabriel Kantor, replaced a broken spring for me, when I arrived from the heights of Cuzco with the spectre of continuing for another week of concerts with a rubber band operating the first octave key. Kantor had a little workshop in his apartment and was making his own shapers and gouging machines.
Of 20th century composers, few have written more for winds than Heitor Villa-Lobos and it was actually our interest in his music that brought about our first visit to Brazil. It was therefore a joy for us to meet his widow, Arminda Villa-Lobos, in Rio de Janeiro, and to have the pleasure of spending some time with her on both trips. We were impressed by her cheerful personality, vitality, and the intensive work she carries on for the music and name of Villa-Lobos.
If our concert in the super-modern capital city of Brasilia was a festive and fitting conclusion to three weeks in Brazil in 1973, without a doubt the acoustical high point of both tours was the Teatro da Paz in Belem near the mouth of the Amazon. I cannot remember ever playing in more ideal conditions for wind chamber music beauty of sound, than in this seldom-used small opera house built in 1878.
The South American continent with its extreme changes of altitude and climate poses equally extreme problems for the traveling double-reed player. Looking back, I think the best thing I did in preparation, was to make a phone call to John Mack who shared with me his experiences of playing in Bogota sometime ago. I hoped that by adding three of four thousand feet to his advice, it would take care of La Paz, Bolivia. Exactly as he predicted, the reeds became stiff and very sharp strange burbles and glunks appeared in various notes, but by scraping everything out of the back and making the reeds very light, it was possible to play and to get almost down to pitch. Having some idea of what might happen before arriving at La Paz, also prevented me from ruining reeds which played at humid sea level in Brazil, and were again usable across the Andes in Lima. For the concerts in between in Cochabamba and La Paz at the Andean heights of 8,000 and 12,400 feet, plus a TV broadcast from the station at El Alto Airport one thousand feet higher, I just took other reeds and hacked them up. Eventually the most disconcerting aspect of playing on the top of the world, was not the shortness of breath and chopping up of phrases as well as of reeds, but was the lack of sound. In the thin air, there was absolutely no resonance or tone, and the notes seemed to stop dead before they had even traveled the distance of one music stand to the other. Listening to the fascinating Bolivian folk music, the robust sound of the Zampona (reed pipes), the penetrating twang of the armadillo-backed Charango, all accompanied by vigorous beating on a large drum, I could not help but feel that this was the most successful way to combat the lack of carrying power of the air, especially when playing as they do, for outdoor festivals.
Aside from the many heartwarming contacts with fellow-musicians, the hospitality and kindness shown us everywhere by the personnel of the United States State Department and the Bi-National Centers, our South American tours were extremely rewarding from the cultural, historic, and scenic standpoints. We were fortunate in Brazil to be able to make side trips to the magnificent waterfalls of Iguacu, and to the old mining town of Ouro Preto with its wealth of baroque architecture. In Bolivia, driving across the Altiplano to Lake Titicaca, we saw llamas grazing, and then took a boat to the island of Suriqui where the traditional balsa boats are still being made. We browsed and shopped in the Indian markets and between concerts in Peru, visited Cuzco and the spectacular Inca city of Machu Picchu as well as the ruins of Pachacamac and Chan Chan.
Flying in to Arequipa for our last concert in Peru, I again marveled at the bleak splendor of the snowcapped volcanic peaks, El Misti, Chachani, and Pichu Pichu, all near 20,000 feet high, at the same time feeling grateful that the town lying below us was at a mere 8,000, and as such, should present no special problems to one by now experienced in the ups and downs of oboe travel in South America!