La Favorita, Donizetti-Pasculli-Intro, Edino Biaggi Oboe

Introduction to "La Favorita", for oboe and piano, by Donizetti, arranged by Antonio Pasculli.
Edino Biaggi, Oboe
Victor Moreno, Piano
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Antonio Pasculli was among the great virtuosi of the oboe, an instrument for which he wrote music of considerable brilliance, making phenomenal demands on any performer. Born in Palermo in 1842, he embarked on a career as a performer at the age of fourteen, appearing in Italy, Germany and Austria. In 1860, at the age of eighteen, he became professor of oboe and cor anglais at the Palermo Conservatory, where he taught until 1913. His playing career, during which he also appeared with his brother Gaetano, a violinist, came to an end in 1884, when it seemed he might be losing his sight. Pasculli played a boxwood oboe and an eleven-key cor anglais.
As a conductor from 1879 Pasculli directed the Municipal Music Corps in Palermo, insisting that his wind players should also play string instruments, thus enabling the band to tackle a much wider and more adventurous repertoire. The orchestra was disbanded on Pasculli’s retirement in 1913. He outlived his three sons, the youngest of whom was killed in the Great War. Of his six daughters two became harpists.
Pasculli provided himself with virtuoso oboe repertoire in his fantasies on themes from popular operas of his time. These include Donizetti’s La favorita, Poliuto and L’elisir d’amore, Verdi’s I vespri siciliani, Un ballo in maschera and Rigoletto, Bellini’s Il pirata and La sonnambula and Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots. Other compositions for oboe include three Characteristic Studies, including Le Api (The Bees), a Trio Concertante for oboe, violin and piano on themes from Rossini’s William Tell, his Ricordo di Napoli and a transcription of Rode’s Caprices. Other works were written for his band. In his operatic fantasias the thematic material is of less importance than the amazing technical demands made on any player, in ornamentation, cadenzas and other elements of virtuosity. The musical allusions may now be lost, but the technical display remains supreme.