Oboe Concerto - Elliott Carter

Ensemble InterContemporain conducted by Pierre Boulez. Heinz Holliger as the oboist.
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Carter's Oboe concerto was composed between 1986-7, being commissioned by Paul Sacher for the oboist Heinz Holliger. It was premiered on June 17 of 1988, performed by the Collegium Musicum Zürich under the conductor John Carewe along with Heinz Holliger. Sacher was a wealthy businessman and conductor of the Basel Chamber Orchestra who was responsible for financing numerous masterpieces for decades from the greatest composers of the century.
In this concerto, there are three main "characters": There is the solo oboe, who has a rather vehement, angry voice, often buzzing and making other modernistic sounds, but just as often falling into a kind of lost modern, atonal, lyrical melody. Then there is the main orchestra, which is serious-minded and dramatic, though without the personal emotional character of the oboe soloist. In addition, there is a small chamber group comprising four violas and a percussion player. This group is impetuous and flighty, a contrast to the regularity of the way the orchestra plays its material. In addition, the chamber group and the orchestra have entirely separate musical material, and develop this material in totally separate streams. The oboe sometimes mediates between the two. It is not easy music to grasp in its atonal and rhythmically complex style.
I couldn't find information about the picture.
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Unfortunately, the score is not available.

[@dad8980]

Thanks

[@l.c.turner-thedailycanon]

Thanks for the description! I was listening to this all week and thinking how odd it was that I wasn't hearing the usual Carter "dialogue" between instruments - it seemed more like "song without words", for lack of a better phrase. The groups are indeed really hard to pick out just by listening to it. Not sure if that's a problem with the music or just the limitations of recordings.

[@stueystuey1962]

The oboe doesn't lend itself to the type of virtuosity associated with the strings, the piano or the clarinet. The purity of the notes,the sustain,the breath induced vibrato, and the long limbed melodic lines are more in evidence; a delightful work perhaps not as sublime as Maderna's compositions but worthy of performance. Not a whole lot of oboe concertos out there.

[@rdk1952]

I heard a performance of this piece in Minneapolis some years ago; Heinz Holliger was the soloist there as well. I found the live performance had greater clarity of the instrumental lines, and I heard more going on than in the recording! (of course the recording is performed wonderfully, but the recording quality is unhappily somewhat lacking.)

[@albertocantoni5064]

Great work of music not far, even if very different, from the masterpiece for the same instrument of Maderna’s third oboe concerto.

[@machida5114]

sodelicious.............🙂

[@machida5114]

great music...