Editor's Note: This article appeared in the New York Times of April 10, 1977. It is reprinted here with the kind permission and encouragement of Mr. Gomberg.
It's a small fraternity. Ralph Gomberg in Boston. John Mack in Cleveland. Ray Still in Chicago. Two or three others. These are the best oboe players currently active in American symphony orchestras. Of these, the most legendary is Harold Gomberg, brother of the above-mentioned Ralph, who is leaving the New York Philharmonic at the end of this season after 34 years with the orchestra. And, before that, four years as first oboist of the St. Louis Symphony, one year with the Toronto Symphony and four years with the National Symphony in Washington. For 49 of his 60 years, Harold Gomberg has been tootling the oboe.
Part of the Gomberg legend is in his instrumental expertise. He can produce a fatter tone than any of his colleagues, or a thinner one when he wants to; or he can make his oboe sound like an English horn, a clarinet, a saxophone. His breath control indicates that he was born with a bellows in his chest rather than lungs. His rhythm is infallible, he never makes a false entry, he has the entire repertory at his disposal.
That is part of the Gomberg legend. The other is his reputation as a musician who eats conductors for breakfast. "Who, me?" says the stocky Gomberg demurely, looking innocent. Never Harold Gomberg. Except from the green rooms of concert halls throughout the world come stories of the incorrigible Mr. Gomberg, who has never hesitated to tell man or devil what he thinks. He has told conductors to pack it in. "I can't play it this way!" And he won't. To one conductor who tried to correct him: "If you think you can play it better play it yourself!" To another, who has a reputation as a cold fish, Gomberg said good-bye at the end of the season with a parting injunction: "I hope you meet Venus during the summer." Conductors put up with this. They have to. There are many conductors, but there is only one Harold Gomberg.
Like all oboists, Gomberg can and will talk non-stop for hours about his two favorite subjects--reeds, and the fallibilities of conductors. It is not that he dislikes all conductors. Bruno Walter is his idol--the chevalier sans peur et sans reproche. "For 20 years I played under Walter," he says. "The 'St. Matthew' Passion, the "German Requiem,' the 'Resurrection' Symphony. My God! The 'Lied von der Erde.'" Those memories he cherishes, getting up excitedly to show exactly how Walter beat this measure or phrased that.
He had only one experience with Arturo Toscanini, "Incredible brilliance, line, intensity. When he walked in, nobody had to say 'Silence!' The place suddenly got very quiet. When we got through the 'Euryanthe' Overture, I realized what the Toscanini legend was all about. There was nobody like him."
There are other conductors Gomberg fondly remembers. Beecham, Monteux, Reiner ("The greatest technician of all"), Paray ("an underestimated man"). But always he returns to Walter.
"Conductors today are too busy to grow, to think, to develop. They move too fast, this diaper brigade does. The old-timers studied things so much longer. Walter worked 40 minutes with us just on the opening of the Mozart G minor Symphony. He wanted the violins to slide imperceptibly in over the opening accompaniment. 'See, gentlemen,' he said, 'why I was afraid to conduct this work until I was 45 years old?' When Walter finished a performance, I am thinking specially of the Mahler 'Lied,' the audience was mute, wrung out, so were we in the orchestra."
Gomberg was born in Malden, Mass., a suburb of Boston. There were eight children, and most of them were musical. Ralph plays oboe with the Boston Symphony. Leo, who died two years ago, was trumpeter in various orchestras. Robert joined the violin section of the Philadelphia Orchestra at the age of 17. Celia was a violin soloist. Another sister, Edith never went in for a career but was a fine cellist.
All of the kids studied at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. Harold, who had started the oboe at his public school, auditioned for Marcel Tabuteau at the age of 11, was taken into Curtis and remained there until 17, at which time he became solo oboist with the National Symphony under Hans Kindler. It was at Curtis that Harold met an attractive harpist named Margaret Brill, who was studying with Carlos Salzedo. Not long afterward they got married.
Oboists are supposed to be the most temperamental players in the orchestra. The theory is that, playing such a small-bore instrument, focusing so narrow but concentrated a beam of breath, their brains get addled. Gomberg has heard all this before and smiles at it.
"But, by and large," he says, "we oboists are frustrated. We are loners, always off in a corner whittling reeds, then sucking on them. All of us make our own reeds. We have tools, shapers, gouging machines. Every piece of cane is different. Some last long, others in the same batch wear out fast. We have tried everything, even plastic. Nothing works but the best quality of reed, which comes from Southern France." A dry reed cannot be played, and that is why oboists walk around with reeds perpetually in their mouths, the reeds sticking out like Dracula's canines.
Not everybody can play the oboe. There is such a thing as the ideal embouchure (embouchure being the proper disposition of lips, tongue and so on). Gomberg thinks that the best players have a facial conformation with big sinus cavities and straight teeth. "The oboe is a pressure instrument and the body is involved. To compensate for the tightness of the bore, you open up your own throat passages to create an added dimension of sound." Exactly how he does it, Gomberg cannot explain. He can illustrate on his instrument, but the actual mechanism remains his own secret. "Anyway," he says, "there is no one tone. There are tones. There is a Mozart tone, which is different from a Wagner tone. The Beethoven tone is the hardest of all."
He talks about the French school of oboe playing: penetrating, nasal. The German: pretty limited; accurate but square. The Italian: singing quality but musically a bit naive. The English: jaunty, expressive, with a tone tending to be a little wide and glassy. The Russian: don't even talk about it.
He talks about conductors, endlessly: the real ones and the phonies ("but for God's sake, this is off the record"). Like all good orchestra musicians, he believes that the orchestra does most of the work for the virtuosos of the baton. "My greatest heroes are not the conductors, but my colleagues and friends in the Philharmonic. We are a great orchestra, the most adaptable orchestra in the world, maybe the most overworked. I know we're supposed to be tough on conductors, but I've been there 34 years and I know at least three orchestras a lot tougher than we are. Anyway, considering some of the conductors we've played under, it's a miracle that there wasn't a mutiny. We are the most flexible orchestra there is."
Now that he's retiring, what's ahead?
"Birds, bees, and butterflies," he says. He and his wife plan to live in Perugia, where he will paint--he has been painting for about 30 years - and write a books. That, plus some solo work, some recordings (including a new concerto that Samuel Barber is composing for him), some teaching privately and in master classes, some traveling. There won't be much time for the birds, bees, and butterflies.