HEINZ HOLLIGER – oboe
AURÈLE NICOLET – flute
Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra
conducted by: ELIAHU INBAL
I Musici (Vivaldi)

PTC 5186 129

DSD remastered

RARE JEWELS

On this programme recorded in 1975, oboe-player Heinz Holliger presents a fascinating impression of the varied history of his instrument. Chronologically, both B-flat concertos by the Italian genius Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741), are located at the beginning of this history. The composer wrote a total of 22 oboe concertos, making him the most important contributor to this genre
in Italy. But did Vivaldi actually pen these two works distributed by his Amsterdam publisher Roger in 1717 as part of his Op. 7? The first edition contains mistakes and imprecisions, and lacks both title and dedication – all of which is highly unusual for a collection supposedly authorized
by the composer... Both the three-movement concertos in B-flat
(No. 1 and No. 7) differ greatly from Vivaldi’s usual concerto style, therefore their authenticity must at least be considered doubtful.
However, there has never been a reason for music historians to doubt that the Concerto for Oboe and Strings in E-flat was written by the king of
bel canto, Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835). The work was probably composed in 1823 – being, in fact, Bellini’s only instrumental concerto – during
the course of his studies with N. Zingarelli at the Reale Collegio di Musica di San Sebastiano in Naples. Works such as this already express the quality of composition which drew the admiration of composers as far apart as Verdi and Stravinsky: admiration, as Stravinsky put it, for his “wealth of feeling and individual style” and for
the genius of his inventiveness, which he “scattered through his melodies”. A short introduction is followed by a tender cantilena, which already appears to anticipate Bellini’s marvellous belcanto melodies of the decades to come. In the following Polonaise, duple and triple time are combined to surprising effect. The boisterous main theme returns a number of times and contains a rather more serious middle part.
Probably one of the most remarkable 19th-century works for the oboe, which demands an exceedingly high level of technical mastery from the soloist, was composed before the technique of the oboe was once again greatly improved. The work in question is Bernhard Molique’s (1802-1869) Concertino in G minor, dating from 1829. Molique was born in 1802 in Nürnberg, and as a child was already a prodigious violinist. Between 1826 and 1849 he was leader of the Hofkapelle (= Court Orchestra) in Stuttgart, and it was here that the Concertino was given its first performance by the well-known oboe-player Friedrich Ruthardt. The work follows predominantly the style of Molique’s great example, Louis Spohr.
It virtually ignores the acknowledged technical limitations of the instrument: numerous passages are written in keys which are hard to play on the oboe and, for instance, present huge technical problems by the use of trills on each tone in the rising chromatic lines.
The world of music remembers the Czech Ignaz Moscheles
(1794-1870) mainly as a piano virtuoso and conductor, and as a friend
of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. The story behind the composition of his Concertante in F for Flute, Oboe and Orchestra (a rather unusual scoring) is not quite clear. However, we do know that the composition was given its first performance in 1830 in Stuttgart by flautist Gottfried Kröger and the above-mentioned oboe-player Friedrich Ruthardt. The introductory Adagio patetico is characterized by colourful harmony and provides thoroughly dramatic excitement. The final Rondo offers the soloist numerous opportunities to astound the listener with his playing.
Julius Rietz (1812-1877) succeeded Mendelssohn as the town director of music in Dusseldorf and also as the director of the Gewandhaus concerts in Leipzig. During his Leipzig period – probably in 1857 – he also wrote his three-movement Conzertstück (= concert piece) in F minor for Oboe and Orchestra, Op. 33, which is chronologically the last piece in
Heinz Holliger’s guided tour of the history of the oboe.

“We have here more of the early 1970s quadraphonic recordings made by Philips but which had remained in their tape boxes untouched for 30 years or more because of the realization that none of the quad LP formats of the time was really a viable means of releasing these excellent surround sound recordings to the general public. Since they started in l970 by this time the Philips engineers had perfected their micing to achieve the utmost realism and naturalness in discrete four-channel recording.”