Rubbra: Sonata for Oboe and Piano in C major, Op. 100

James Turnbull writes: 'This disc opens a door to the many different ways in which English composers have explored the oboe since the late nineteenth century'.

Edmund Rubbra composed his Sonata for Oboe and Piano, op.100 in 1958 for Evelyn Rothwell (Lady Barbirolli) whom James met while a student at the RAM.

Edward Longstaff, born in 1965, studied at Royal Holloway College and Goldsmith's College. 'The incredible energy I find in the contemporary works by John Casken and Edward Longstaff is compelling and almost hypnotic to me. What these two composers have achieved with Amethyst Deceiver and Aegeus is remarkable in terms of the extremes they have pushed the oboist to portray'. John Casken's Amethyst Deceiver is a world premiere recording.

James encountered Victorian church composer Thomas Attwood Walmisley's Sonatina through an edition prepared by Christopher Hogwood.

Gustav Holst wrote very little mature chamber music, and the most important example is the Terzetto for flute, oboe and viola he composed in 1925. The wonderful Three Moods by Michael Berkeley and the Terzetto by Holst for flute, oboe and viola of 1925 'display what a great variety of character can be achieved and manage to balance vivid atmospheres with moments of real joy'.

To conclude the recording, James has included Vaughan Williams' Six Studies in English Folksong - in fact, originally for cello and piano.

James Turnbull is an accomplished English oboist, highly sought after for solo and chamber music concerts, and is a featured artist of the Concert Promoters Network and the Countess of Munster Recital Scheme. He has appeared as a soloist in live radio broadcasts and at festivals including the Oxford Chamber Music Festival, Swaledale, King's Lynn and Cambridge Summer Music. In 2010 he gave his debut recital at the Wigmore Hall as an award winner from the Worshipful Company of Musicians.

After gaining a First Class degree in music from Christ Church, Oxford University, James continued his oboe studies at the Royal Academy of Music and under Nicholas Daniel at Trossingen Musikhochschule in Germany, where he was awarded First Class for both his Artist and Soloist Diplomas. His debut solo disc, 'Fierce Tears' was released in 2011 by Quartz music. Dedicated to broadening the appeal of the oboe, James has launched a project called 'The Young Person's Guide to the Oboe' which has an accompanying website.

This 2-CD set celebrates Evelyn Rothwell – Lady Barbirolli (1911-2008) and features rare recordings of her performing concertos and chamber works. The recordings originate from Lady Barbirolli’s own archive. Among the recordings selected for issue here it is good to find the Strauss Oboe Concerto, perhaps the greatest of the many concert for the instrument. Of her association with the Martinu concerto Evelyn was particularly proud. She was a friend of its dedicatee, the Czech player Jiri Tancubudek, and when he came over from Australia to introduce the concerto in Europe she was able to take over some of the performances he wasn’t able to honour, including its Proms première.

It is especially good to hear Evelyn and Barbirolli in partnership in the Mozart Concerto K314. They gave the concerto’s first performance in the version that the Austrian musicologist and conductor Bernhard Paumgartner arranged and edited of the work (previously known only as a flute concerto). After the Salzburg première Evelyn introduced it at the Proms with the LSO under Basil Cameron. The circumstances surrounding the various performances of Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Concerto da Camera are somewhat confusing. The performance included here was given by the Barbirollis in a BBC studio on 6 October 1950, yet when Evelyn played it with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent at the Proms a year later (31 July 1951) it was announced as its first performance in England (in the BBC’s 1981 history of its symphony orchestra as a ‘World Première’). In 1956 when it was announced that illness would prevent Barbirolli’s appearances at the Proms, it was George Weldon who deputised for him in Geoffrey Bush’s Oboe Concerto. Little need be said about Vaughan Williams’s Concerto: the Barbirolli’s enjoyed an extraordinarily warm friendship with the composer and his wife, musically rewarded in the most handsome way with the dedication to the conductor of RVW’s Symphony No.8. The old composer seemed to have a special affection for Evelyn’s playing of it: ‘We listened to your record the other night, and it is lovely. I cannot imagine anything better in the way of a performance ...’ he wrote to her.