Your Favourite Oboe Work

[Beef Oven!]

While posting the RVW Oboe concerto on the WAYLTN? thread, I nearly added that it is one of my favourite compostions for oboe.

I really do like the sound of the oboe, it adds so much to the orchestral sound and is often a very welcome part of chamber works.

RVW, John Corigliano's concerto and Bruno Maderna's spring to my mind as some of my favourite works for this instrument. I also like Vivaldi's use of this instrument.

I would be interested in other members' preferences regarding the oboe.

[pastoralguy]

Easy! The Strauss Oboe Concerto! A work I didn't know until I had to play it wth an ex-girlfriend as soloist. Just the most beautiful work.

[Pulcinella]

I think Prokofiev got it right, when he gave the oboe the role of the duck in Peter and the wolf.


Love the RVW concerto, by the way, and the Strauss is pretty good too.

[Richard Barrett]

I like the Strauss concerto and Maderna's and Carter's and Henze's (double concerto for oboe and harp) and numerous things by Vivaldi, Telemann and Bach (the openings of Cantatas 108 and 124 for example) but when I think of oboe and orchestra it would have to be Heinz Holliger's Siebengesang. He's written plenty of solo and chamber music for the instrument too, of course.

Also:
Berio's Sequenza VII and Chemins IV
James Clarke's Oboe Quintet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6TV7042cgU
Vinko Globokar, Atemstudie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYJr1gTHgvg
more as I think of them...

[Beef Oven!]

Easy! The Strauss Oboe Concerto! A work I didn't know until I had to play it wth an ex-girlfriend as soloist. Just the most beautiful work.

The Strauss has never moved me. I have the EMI Karajan and the Later DG. The consensus is that it is an excellent work, so the problem lies with me!

I'll give it a few listens this week and see what happens.

[cloughie]

Mozart K370

[Beef Oven!]

I like the Strauss concerto and Maderna's and Carter's and Henze's (double concerto for oboe and harp) and numerous things by Vivaldi, Telemann and Bach (the openings of Cantatas 108 and 124 for example) but when I think of oboe and orchestra it would have to be Heinz Holliger's Siebengesang. He's written plenty of solo and chamber music for the instrument too, of course.

Also:
Berio's Sequenza VII and Chemins IV
James Clarke's Oboe Quintet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6TV7042cgU
Vinko Globokar, Atemstudie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYJr1gTHgvg
more as I think of them...

The Carter And Henze had slipped my mind, temporarily.

Thanks for the reminder on Chemins IV - I haven't listened to that for a while.

Thanks for the links to the other works

[Wychwood]

One that used to crop up regularly on R3 morning programmes (long before Breakfast and EC) was L'horloge de Flore by Jean Français (John de Lancie/LSO/Previn was the recording of choice, IIRC).
And for a quick fix I often turn to the Albinoni oboe concertos.

[Richard Tarleton]

©The New Yorker

[Richard Tarleton]

I too love the Strauss oboe concerto. We heard a fine performance by Francois Leleux with WNO/Roth in Cardiff about 7 years ago.

Also Cavalleria Rusticana, of which Carlo Rizzi says in the programme note for the WNO/Elijah Moshinsky production which we saw in 1996, "In terms of orchestraton, Cavalleria is like a concerto for oboe and orchestra", an interesting comment which made me listen to it in a new way.

The cartoon was sent to me by my Ottawa correspondent, who sends me the New Yorker's frequent musical and birdwatching cartoons (or "drawings", as they're known at the New Yorker).

[Flay]

Easy! The Strauss Oboe Concerto! A work I didn't know until I had to play it wth an ex-girlfriend as soloist. Just the most beautiful work.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/play/p029djrd

Beautiful indeed.

And the Bach double concerto is lovely (is that cheating?)

https://youtu.be/vLCm9xZ9cL8

[Serial_Apologist]

I like the Strauss concerto and Maderna's and Carter's and Henze's (double concerto for oboe and harp) and numerous things by Vivaldi, Telemann and Bach (the openings of Cantatas 108 and 124 for example) but when I think of oboe and orchestra it would have to be Heinz Holliger's Siebengesang. He's written plenty of solo and chamber music for the instrument too, of course.

Also:
Berio's Sequenza VII and Chemins IV
James Clarke's Oboe Quintet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6TV7042cgU
Vinko Globokar, Atemstudie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYJr1gTHgvg
more as I think of them...

The Henze double concerto, with the composer and his wife as the two soloists, on DG - for which I am eternally grateful to the lost soul who pawned it, and I was able to find and buy it on spec. And how wonderful that somebody else knows this wonderful oboist's "Siebengesang", containing among many wonderful things as it does that extraordinary climax at which the oboe is suddenly amplified, taking on almost cosmic dimensions over the orchestral mass!

I would add one of the movements of Bliss's "Conversations", which is for just solo oboe; the same composer's Oboe Quintet of 1928 (I think), and Britten's solo oboe "Metamorphoses after Ovid", one of the few of his works that actually... works for me.

[Roslynmuse]

Some fine repertoire for oboe and piano - Poulenc Sonata, Rubbra Sonata (although I always feel the last movement is a let down), Richard Rodney Bennett After Syrinx, even the Saint-Saens Sonata. Howells - a rather long and - I think - posthumously published Sonata (not as good as the Clarinet Sonata, but still worth exploring). To my ears the Lutoslawski Epitaph is a rather unsatisfactory piece. Concertos - if you like the Vaughan Williams, try the Mathias Concerto - the 2nd mt is particularly haunting. There's an Ibert Concerto too, called Symphonie Concertante. Britten - Temporal Variations and Schumann Romances (back to oboe and piano). There's a short Soliloquy by Elgar which was part of a projected concerto - completed by Gordon Jacob. And part of another projected concerto, a Canzonetta by Barber.

[Barbirollians]

Martinu Concerto , Mozart Oboe Quartet and Concerto and Strauss Concerto .

Though probably cheating my favourite of all is Bach's concerto for oboe d'amore.

[Beef Oven!]

Some fine repertoire for oboe and piano - Poulenc Sonata, Rubbra Sonata (although I always feel the last movement is a let down), Richard Rodney Bennett After Syrinx, even the Saint-Saens Sonata. Howells - a rather long and - I think - posthumously published Sonata (not as good as the Clarinet Sonata, but still worth exploring). To my ears the Lutoslawski Epitaph is a rather unsatisfactory piece. Concertos - if you like the Vaughan Williams, try the Mathias Concerto - the 2nd mt is particularly haunting. There's an Ibert Concerto too, called Symphonie Concertante. Britten - Temporal Variations and Schumann Romances (back to oboe and piano). There's a short Soliloquy by Elgar which was part of a projected concerto - completed by Gordon Jacob. And part of another projected concerto, a Canzonetta by Barber.

Phew!

Quite a few I don't know there (Ibert, Britten, Elgar, Poulenc, Howells ....)

I'd add Alan Hoddinot's Doubles, Concertante for oboe, string orchestra and harpsichord, Op. 106