Krommer / King / Soroka / Stern / Kam / Khoma - Oboe Quartet 3 / Quintets for Oboe and Strings - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

The legendary British oboist Leon Goossens inspired all the composers represented on this recording, and they wrote all but one of the pieces for his oboe, on which he premièred the works by Delius, Bax, Bliss, and Finzi featured here. The piece by Vaughan Williams is written for cor anglais, but Goossens's precious instrument also premièred Vaughan Williams's Oboe Concerto, in 1944. Nicolas Daniel has, with special permission from Goossens's daughter Jennie, recorded the Delius Interludes on Leon Goossens's (now 110-year-old) Oboe, rather than his own modern instrument, and contributes a fascinating booklet note on the influence and experience of playing this instrument.

Georg Druschetzky is a name that people who know their music history associate with charming but innocuous wind partitas and truly out-of-the-ordinary concertos for six, seven, or eight timpani and orchestra. The latter category comes as no surprise; after all, Druschetzky was an InchUpper Austrian Regional TimpanistInch (a title actually bestowed on him in Linz in 1776), and so why shouldn't he offer compositional tribute to his instrument? But there's more Druschetzky enjoyed a successful career that took him all the way to the court of the Palatine of Hungary, Archduke Joseph von Habsburg, in Ofen (today's Buda), where he held the posts of court composer and music director and wrote masses, symphonies, two operas, and numerous chamber compositions. His chamber works include a cycle of ten oboe quartets (1807-8) from his late years that make an astonishing and lasting listening impression - because of his rich imagination and his compositional wit and spirited harmonic daredevilry that we otherwise encounter only in the Inchsurprise artistInch Haydn. This discovery is so significant that we in any case intend to present all ten quartets in congenial recordings by the Grundmann Quartet on historical instruments. The present is volume 1 in this project.

With it's roots in ancient Greece and Rome, the oboe has evolved from the rustic medieval shawm and the French Baroque hautbois to become the modern instrument we know today. Italian composers provided the first works befitting of it's expressive nature, and ever since, great writers such as J.S. Bach, Handel and Mozart have been inspired by the instrument's unique, emotive qualities, using it as a medium for some of their most beautiful and delicate melodies. With an equal ability to shine in a chamber setting or to rise above an orchestra, and it's distinctive timbre, expressive character and versatility, the oboe continues to be an inspirational and joyful instrument.