(Editor's Note: Neil Parker in the publicity office of the New York Philharmonic made most of this material available to us. He has our sincere gratitude.)
Joseph Robinson joined the Philharmonic
as Principal Oboist in 1978. Prior to that he was principal for
six seasons with the Atlanta Symphony. A former faculty member
of the North Carolina School of the Arts, he was also first oboist
with the Piedmont Chamber Orchestra and the Clarion Wind Quintet.
In addition to his solo appearances with the Philharmonic and
other orchestras, he has participated in the Marlboro, Blossom,
Berkshire and Grand Teton Festivals.
Born in Lenoir, North Carolina, Mr. Robinson graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Davidson College, where he majored in English. He went on to earn a Masters degree in public affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. While in Europe on a Fulbright Scholarship, he met Marcel Tabuteau and became the first student accepted by that renowned teacher following his retirement from the Philadelphia Orchestra. Studies with John Mack began in 1959 and in 1975 Mr. Robinson established the John Mack Oboe Camp, one of the most successful specialty seminars of its kind. In 1983 Mr. Robinson received an honorary doctorate from Davidson College and used the occasion to organize a special benefit concert which raised $350,000 for student musicians at the school.
On December 14, 1984, Mr. Robinson premiered George Rochberg's Concerto for Oboe and Orchestra, one of a series of works commissioned by the Philharmonic to provide the orchestra's principals with new solo pieces. The work, composed for Mr. Robinson, is eighteen minutes long in four sections played without pause. The following program notes and commentary by the composer are reproduced with the kind permission of the Philharmonic- Symphony Society of New York, Inc., from Notes on the Program:
" In this Concerto, I have made no effort to exploit the extremes of the oboe because, as I see it, the main reason for writing a piece is to say something, not to concentrate on the purely technical characteristics of an instrument. Except for a few tuttis, the oboe is prominent throughout, although the writing for the solo is not virtuosic in the usual sense; rather, the work demands an expressive virtuosity from the soloist.
To my ear, the oboe has a special voice in its purely expressive, plangent quality, its probing kind of singing. Of all the woodwinds, I think the oboe is the most full of personality. This Concerto was designed for Joseph Robinson, and while writing it I had very much in mind his approach to the instrument, which is lyric and involves wonderful phrasing and marvelous tone.
Formally, the Concerto is rhapsodic, cast in four parts played without pause. The first and last sections present the essential pool of ideas out of which the expressive aspects of the work derive; however, neither has only one characteristic or quality throughout, because each divides into smaller units of gesture. The first section, a poco andante with two middle parts, is mostly slow music - poetic, lyric, singing - while the word scherzo conveys the character of the second: lively, ironic, with constantly shifting meters. The Concerto's third section, a march, is again a kind of ironic music, but for the most part in regular meter. In the second and third parts I have tried to reveal aspects of the oboe that are opposed to the plangent - satiric, comic, slightly acerbic; nevertheless, great seriousness is involved in both.
There are two oboe cadenzas, occurring between the first and second and the third and fourth sections. They are entirely different in character, the first being a kind of expansive arioso, the second taking its cue from the atmosphere of the march. The work's final part, primarily slow and reflective, contains references to ideas from the first section, although none of the material returns in exactly the same way. My feeling is that this music deepens the expressive world of the opening. The final twenty bars are a kind of coda with quiet, delicate tone-clusters, and the piece ends softly, fading away.
I think of my Oboe Concerto as being the most poetic of my recent efforts, and I have no hesitation in terming it a romantic work. Although the writing tends to be highly chromatic, there is, overall, a strong sense of tonal direction in line and harmony.
Known especially for his pioneering work in the recent 'new romanticism,' Rochberg has had three clearly demarcated phases in his composing career. During the 1940s, his musical style encompassed the language of Bartok, Hindemith and Stravinsky, demonstrated by his Symphony No. I and String Quartet No. 1. In the 1950s, Rochberg, along with many other American composers, became fascinated by Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone system; as he said, 'When I stumbled into Schoenberg, it was like a tremendous tidal wave. You don't have to have an experience like that, but when you do, you have to do something about it.' His Symphony No. 2, Cheltenham Concerto for small orchestra and Twelve Bagatelles for piano are prime examples of Rochberg's dodecaphonic work.
The composer's present, tonal-eclectic phase was brought on by the death of his son Paul in 1964. 'It became crystal clear to me,' he stated, ,that I could not continue writing so-called serial music. It was finished, hollow, meaningless. It also became clearer than ever before that the only justification for claiming one was engaged in the artistic act was to open one's art completely to life and its entire gamut of terror and joys (real and imagined); and to find, if one could, new ways to transmute these into whatever magic one was capable of.'
With his 1965 chamber piece Contra Mortem Et Tempus (Against Death and Time), Rochberg embarked on a path of conspicuous eclecticism, and subsequently produced works utilizing what he termed 'a collage or assemblage of scraps and bits from the music of other composers,' where direct quotes and reminiscences of the styles of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven can often be found alongside similar material from Mahler, Bartok and Schoenberg - 'music about music,' in one critic's apt description. Scores such as the String Quartets Nos. 3,4,5 and 6, the Violin Concerto and the opera The Confidence Man have (as I wrote elsewhere) 'gained for him a considerable reputation as a tonal and melodic, anachronistic but provocative composer who dares startle and possibly disorient his audience by blending old and recent styles in one work.' "
Rochberg's Concerto for Oboe and Orchestra was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic with the aid of a generous gift from Francis Goelet, as part of an ongoing project to provide its principal players with works for solo orchestral instruments. Written between February and April 1983, the Concerto has a duration of about eighteen minutes. The scoring is for 2 flutes, (2nd doubling on piccolo), 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, celesta, and strings.
Phillip Ramey
Miss Sylar...
Pictured is Sherry Sylar, Associate
Principal of the New York Philharmonic.
Sherry Sylar joined the New York Philharmonic as Associate Principal Oboist in January. She comes to the Orchestra from the Louisville Orchestra, where she served as second oboist for two and a half years. A finalist in the Young Concert Artists Competition, she has performed on radio station WQXR, with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and at the Spoleto Festival in both South Carolina and Italy. Her summers have been spent playing with the Bach Aria Group at the Bach Festival in Stony Brook, New York, and as oboe soloist with the Lake Placid Sinfonietta.
Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1955, Miss Sylar began piano studies at age five. Eight years later she started oboe lessons and knew immediately that it was to be her instrument. She went on to study with Jerry Sirucek at Indiana University. She later worked with Ray Still at Northwestern University, where she received a Master of Music degree. Before graduate school, she taught at the University of Evansville and played with the Evansville Philharmonic and the Owensboro Symphony.