Nigel Shore Oboe · Oboe d'amore · Cor anglais |
||
 |
|
|
The Berlin Oboe Quartet Nigel Shore - oboe
Having celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2009, the Berlin Oboe Quartet is looking back on an exemplary career combining its two principal objectives: the rediscovery of long-lost classical masterpieces and the performance, recording and commissioning of works by British composers. Formed in 1984 by four musicians who met playing with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and taking its name from the famous London Oboe Quartet, formed with similar aims by Janet Caxton, the Berlin Oboe Quartet was a scholarship-holder of the Countess of Munster Musical Trust, which enabled the young musicians to gain enormous concert experience touring the United Kingdom. Concerts throughout Germany and Poland followed, and the Quartet soon found its own voice: inspired by the works of Mozart and Britten, the Berlin Oboe Quartet built a considerable repertoire of unknown classical works (Gaetti, Fila, Abel, J.C. Bach) and made a speciality of presenting oboe quartets by major British composers throughout Europe (Bennett, McCabe, Colin Matthews), recording the central works of their repertoire for the SFB and the BBC. The first commission by the Berlin Oboe Quartet, with support from the British Council in Berlin, was a work by Roger Steptoe, which was performed in Berlin and London. Impressed and delighted with their performance of his Oboe Quartet in London, Colin Matthews immediately expressed an interest in writing a second quartet for the ensemble. This wish resulted in the Berlin Oboe Quartet's second commission, Colin Matthews' Second Oboe Quartet, which was played at London's Purcell Room and the Bath Festival. Florian Donderer joined the Berlin Oboe Quartet in 1994.
Reviews The Berlin Oboe Quartet gave a short programme of works by Britten, Colin Matthews and Richard Rodney Bennett, which was lavishly garnished by Nigel Shore's wonderfully broad oboe sound and by string playing of the very highest order. And that is no hyperbole. Stephen Pettitt, The times Even more impressive were The Berlin Oboe Quartet when string playing of thoroughbred class and wonderful colour variety more than held its own against (or rather with) Nigel Shore's superbly rich oboe tone. ...Their style exactly suited the gentle urgency and subdued yet purposeful invention of the quartet of Colin Matthews. Richard Rodney Bennett's quartet also revealed itself to be a score of great range, contrast, power and reflection - something I had not remembered from other performances where it was his professionalism and craftsmanship which struck you most. Giles Easterbrook, The Strad Colin Matthews was so taken with the Berlin Oboe Quartet's performance of his first work for them a year ago that he offered to write them another and was eagerly accepted. Its premire last night, in the Park Lane Group's fruitful concert series, was another success for a quartet who are Berlin by association rather than origin, since two are English and a third Australian. But all met while studying and performing there with the Berlin Philharmonic. Matthews' Second Oboe Quartet, concentrated into less than 10 minutes, is notable for the harmonic and rhythmic resource of its string writing as a context for Nigel Shore's oboe to establish a distinctive musical personality in concertante subtlety. There is plenty for the ear to savour in the music's short time-span as it travels through fluently diverse variations of which the end of one is overlapped by the start of the next. As with the Oboe Quartet by Roger Steptoe, also commissioned for these players and first performed last year in Berlin, it is music that calls for imagination as well as expertise. Steptoe's two-movement work makes much of individual contrasts of character and timbre among the players. These works were matched to classic points of reference in this repertory by Mozart and Britten. The former's Oboe Quartet (K370) was given with elegance of line and agility of figuration, and Britten's amazingly inventive student work, the Phantasy Quartet Op.2, brought florid lyricism and scrupulous judgement of weight and balance in its performance. A cheeky arrangement of familiar Villa-Lobos by the oboist made diverting listening to end with. Noël Goodwin, The Times
Repertoire
Classical C.F. Abel: Quartet in A major Contemporary Richard Rodney Bennett: Quartet Quartets with English Horn Jean Françaix: Quatuor |
||
|
|
|
