Martinu: Concerto for Oboe and Orchestra

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.

Sir John Barbirolli conducts Tchaikovsky's Symphony No.4 and the Martinů Oboe Concerto, with his wife Evelyn Rothwell as soloist, from the 1958 and 1959 Promenade Concerts.

Evelyn Rothwell (Lady Barbirolli) recalled the Martinů concerto in her book Life with Gloriuous John: “I made great friends with the oboist Jiri Tancibudek. Many years ago he had left his native Czechoslovakia to make his life in Australia, where he had a most successful career..... Martinů’s Oboe Concerto was written for him and he has recorded it on CD, having studied it with the composer. Jiri came to Europe to introduce the work himself, but could not stay long enough to play the first performance in England, so I had the privilege of introducing this fine concerto at the Proms in London and other European cities.”

Since her debut CD in 2001, Yeon-Hee Kwak, the winner of two Echo Klassic awards, has been known as the “Paganini of the Oboe”. Now she pays homage to three first-class oboe composers of the 20th century.

Stephan Schilli became solo oboist with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra at the age of only 20. Here he presents three masterpieces of the oboe repertoire. All three composers wrote their concertos within 10 years (1945-1955) but all are examples of very different traditions and styles.

The common denominator of the recordings of three virtuoso concertos is the name of the soloist. In 1932, while still a student, František Hanták was engaged by Václav Talich to take up the post of first oboist of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. At the same time, Hanták was a member of Czech Nonet and, later on, also played with the Czech Philharmonic Wind Quintet and the pioneering ensemble Ars rediviva.

The concertos, however, are also related in the fact that all were created to the interpreter's order. Mozart composed his concerto in 1777 in Salzburg for Giuseppe Ferlendis, oboist of the Court Chapel. Only later on, under pressure of time, did he transpose it for flute, so as to meet another order.

The initiator of Martinu’s oboe concerto was Jirí Tancibudek, oboist of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, who emigrated in 1950 to Australia. He premiered the work in Sydney and also played it on many occasions in Europe, yet it was František Hanták who premiered the concerto in Czechoslovakia in 1960, despite the disfavour against the composer prevailing at the authorities.

Strauss’s lucid chamber score of the oboe concerto originated in 1945, following a casual visit from the American soldier John de Lanoy, in civilian life solo oboist of the Philadelphia Philharmonic Orchestra. The 81-year-old Strauss completed the exquisite work in the winter of the same year.

'My entire relation to music is such that I always try to go to the limits' (Heinz Holliger)

The artistry of Holliger (b.1939) prompted Evelyn Rothwell (Lady Barbirolli) to call him 'The Paganini of the oboe' Holliger's mastery of the oboe ranges over a vast expanse of repertoire, from the baroque to contemporary -- Bach to Berio and Zelenka to Zimmermann. His style is notable for its flexibility, agility, integrity and ability to communicate convincingly across the wide range of repertoire he performs. Holliger has done much to champion the oboe music of composers such as Zelenka and Krommer, and has also had over 100 works composed for him by composers including Berio, Carter, Henze, Ligeti, Lutoslawski, Penderecki and Stockhausen.

This 10CD collection provides a superb showcase for his artistry, spanning nearly 250 years of repertoire from the well known to the obscure, and to every one of the works here his unique and phenomenal technique to makes the interpretation sound effortless and flawless.

Other information

- Extensive booklet notes on each work, and a biographical essay on Holliger

- 'This is an enchanting performance: I do not believe that among modern recordings there is a better' Gramophone, November 1985 (Mozart Oboe Quartet)