Jiri Tancibudek
John de Lancie's brilliant performance of the Martinu Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy in February was reason enough to reawaken my interest in this delightful, but comparatively little-known work. I was fortunately able to hear the February 15 performance myself and to visit with Mr. de Lancie just after it. Daniel Webster, writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer, called the concerto "an agreeable, tangy work that shows an understanding of the oboe and the needs of the player. Martinu devised an accompaniment that is lightweight and dependent on the piano for spice. The songful second movement set the oboe above a rippling piano pattern making this almost a concerto grosso. The virtuoso display in the work was devoted to the top of the instrument's range where de Lancie soared unshakably. De Lancie's performance was a model of refinement and control . . ." I myself had the pleasure - quite unexpected - to give this work its first US performance, with the Eastman Chamber Orchestra, in Rochester, New York, in July, 1965.
Richard Freed, program annotator for the Philadelphia Orchestra has given his kind permission to quote from his notes on the concerto.
Many composers have had colorful beginnings, but few, certainly, have actually been born in the bell-tower of a church, as Martinu was; his father was the district fire-watchman as well as a shoemaker, and the family lived in the belfry which served as his official lookout post. At the age of six young Bohuslav began to study the violin - with a local tailor for his teacher. By the time he was ten he was an accomplished performer and the composer of a string quartet, and at 16 he was sent to Prague, on funds raised by family friends, to study at the Conservatory. He found the routine dull, and dropped out, ultimately taking a post in the Czech Philharmonic violin section which he held for ten years. ("The textbooks," he remarked many years later, "have all the correct answers and they can't produce a measure of living music.") While playing in the orchestra, Martinu took private lessons from Josef Suk, and then went to Paris for further study with Albert Roussel. The search for a consistent "influence" in his compositions, though, is a fruitless one: his language is very much his own, whether dealing with Czech themes or Biblical ones, in the classically disciplined works he dedicated to his mentor Roussel or those in which he incorporated the spirit of American jazz.
All of these elements, to some degree, are exhibited in the Oboe Concerto, which, like the one by Strauss, is a late and reflective work. It was composed in Nice in April and May of 1955 for Jiri Tancibudek, a Czech oboist who had settled in Australia; Tancibudek gave the work its first performance during the following year in a Melbourne broadcast and performed it again in a BBC broadcast from London on June 29, 1958. The first non-broadcast presentation of the Concerto may well have been the last concert performance of any of Martinu's music during the composer's lifetime: Evelyn Rothwell played the work at a concert of the Halle Orchestra, conducted by her husband, Sir John Barbirolli, on August 24, 1959, just four days before Martinu died of stomach cancer in a Swiss sanatorium.
The orchestra for the Concerto comprises two flutes, two clarinets, a bassoon, two horns, trumpet, piano and strings. Without even asking how long Martinu was in Nice before undertaking this work, it is possible to discern a certain "Mediterranean" flavor - not unlike that of Milhaud's Provence - in the rhapsodic opening movement. A nervous four-note figure, usually repeated, is heard persistently throughout the movement, given variously to almost every instrument fantasy is set in relief against this animated background; the movement ends calmly, as prelude to what is to follow.
A new note of intimacy and depth is struck in the unhurried orchestral introduction to the slow movement. It is only after a benediction from the horn ends this prefatory rumination that the oboe enters, at first alone and then accompanied only by the piano, in a meditation of some urgency. As in the typical baroque concerto, soloist and orchestra are not heard together, but only alternate with each other - until the coda, in which the intensity is resolved in a mood of deep peace.
The driving figure which opens the final movement recalls Martinu's early fascination with jazz, and this impression is sustained by both the motoric rhythms and the wind coloring in the tuttis. By way of contrast, the oboe has a long cadenza evoking a pastoral feeling before rejoining its companions for the bustling, brightly colored conclusion.
Jiri Tancibudek was kind enough to share his thoughts on the concerto in a letter dated March 3, 1975 from which he has given me permission to quote.
Naturally I love the Martinu oboe concerto and I think it is one of the finest we have in the oboe repertoire. I particularly like the opening of the first movement, the whole of the second and the almost irresistible rhythmical vitality of the last movement, reminiscent of a vivacious Czech "Polka. "
I feel however, this concerto, in spite of its freshness and originality, is not as grateful and in a sense as easy for the soloist to perform as for example the Strauss or Mozart concertos. Being such a tremendously prolific composer, Martinu wrote rather quickly, sometimes almost in a haste. This one particular characteristic of some of his works is possibly evident in the first movement of his oboe concerto. It seems to me too brief and its interesting material somehow not developed enough. Whenever I play it, I feel I would like to finish the movement less abruptly, perhaps recapitulating the most attractive Iyrical opening melody, so typical for Martinu. On the other hand, he made up for it in the second movement. I remember when rehearsing the concerto with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra conducted by Karel Ancerl in 1961, that after we have played the first few bars of the last section in the second movement (between figures 5 - 6 in the printed copy) Ancerl suddenly stopped and with nearly tears of joy in his eyes he said: "This is absolutely beautiful, " and then we continued.
I have more than ten letters from Bohuslav Martinu concerning the oboe concerto. When he started to write it, he asked me to send him some material, namely passages of virtuoso character - kind of preluding - which would particularly suit my finger technique, etc. He said: "I want it to be truly your concerto." So I promptly sent him several sheets of manuscript with the required passages to Nice in France. But very unfortunately, the letter was lost on the way (probably stolen as it was rather temptingly thick and Martinu never received it. He wrote to me later that since he did not get anything and because he wanted to finish the work in certain time, he used some oboe studies by E. Bozza as general guide in shaping several passages.
In March 1958, after I had performed the concerto several times, I discussed it with the composer in Basel {Switzerland) and on his request I edited and prepared the oboe part for the Publisher. On my suggestion Martinu agreed to omit the second cadenza in the last movement. He also intended to thin down slightly the instrumentation in several sections of the last movement which I usually found little too heavy for the solo part. But his progressing illness prevented him from doing it.
Unfortunately there are a few errors in the printed copies of both the solo part and the full score. Last year {in March 1974) I showed the original manuscript score to Heinz Holliger and together we checked the published material against the original manuscript score. There are (as one can expect) a few minor discrepancies or at least ambiguities in the printed scores.
It may be of some interest to you to know that in February 1972 professor E. Baudo invited me to his oboe master class at the Paris Conservatoire to listen to some of his most advanced students playing the Martinu concerto.
This may not be very important, but perhaps it should be noted that there is an incorrect statement about the first performance of the concerto in the program notes from Philadelphia. The world premiere of the concerto I did not play over the Radio in Melbourne as stated in the program notes, but at a public subscription concert in Sydney with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hans Schmidt-lsserstedt in August 1956. In March 1958 I played its European first performance in Hamburg with the Northdeutscher Rundfunk Orchester under Dr. Schmidt-Isserstedt and a few days later I recorded it for the Austrian Radio in Vienna with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra under Prof. Prochaska. The only performance on the North American continent I played was with the C.B.C Orchestra in Vancouver, B.C - Canada in April 1958. "
The concerto is published by Eschig, and to my knowledge the only recording available in the US is the performance of Frantisek Hantak on Supraphon GMM 97.
Principal Oboe of The Philadelphia Orchestra, John
de Lancie has been influential in enlarging the repertoire and popularity of the
oboe as a solo instrument - by commissioning special works and by introducing
audiences to rarely performed works. He is responsible for persuading Richard
Strauss to write his first and only Oboe Concerto performed in 1964, and he
commissioned French composer Jean Francaix to write "L'Horloge de Flore"
for Oboe and Orchestra which was given its world premiere by Mr. Ormandy and the
Orchestra in 1961. When Mr. de Lancie performed the Mozart Concerto in C major
for Oboe and Orchestra in April, 1972, he played cadenzas that he had written
himself. He also commissioned the Concerto for Oboe and Orchestra by Benjamin
Lees and has performed it several times in Philadelphia.
A native of California, Mr. de Lancie received his early education in that state and, after high school, studied with Marcel Tabuteau at the Curtis Institute. Upon graduating from Curtis, Mr. de Lancie played with the Pittsburgh Symphony and spent wartime service overseas before joining The Philadelphia Orchestra in 1946. Becoming Associate Principal in 1948, he became Principal when Marcel Tabuteau retired in 1953. As a member of the Orchestra, Mr. de Lancie has twice won the C. Hartman Kuhn award, a tribute paid each year by The Philadelphia Orchestra Association to the Orchestra member "who has shown enterprise and musical ability of such character as to enhance the reputation and musical standards of The Philadelphia Orchestra." Mr. de Lancie is a member of the Curtis Institute faculty.