Sub-Principal Oboe Katherine Bryer (photo credit: Reuben Paris)

This article is part of an ongoing series this Season focusing on the concerto as written for specific instruments in the orchestra. With contributions from SCO players, we hope these give you some new insight into works you know and an idea of others they would recommend seeking out.

As one of the earliest non-stringed instruments to have joined the orchestra, the oboe has an impressively broad repertoire when it comes to stepping into the spotlight for solo passages. At the risk of repeating ourselves (you might have heard this one before), the number of concertos written for it dropped considerably in the 19th century, but composers since have more than made up for this, and our Sub-Principal Oboe Katherine Bryer is wonderfully enthusiastic about the music written for her instrument. Or rather, instruments: she also plays the cor anglais in the Orchestra, and its plaintive sound has inspired some much-loved solos of its own.

While the flute and clarinet took over as more versatile alternatives to the recorder and chalumeau respectively, the oboe has an ancestor of its own in the shawm, an instrument whose history reaches from medieval times into the Renaissance. Its rustic sound contrasts sharply with the more poised oboe, but as composers were quick to discover, the newer instrument also had its lighter side. Put three of them together and they can sound almost gossipy, and in the right hands, it can convey soulfulness with ease – though arguably it wouldn’t until 1936, with the composition of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf (in which the oboe represents the ill-fated duck), that this would truly come to the fore.

Back in the Baroque era, however, the oboe was prized above all for its elegance. This can be heard right from the inception of the concerto in Italy, where Alessandro Scarlatti, the Sammartini brothers, Marcello, Albinoni and Vivaldi all contributed early entries to the genre. Of these, it is Albinoni’s Concerto No 5 in D minor which Katherine singles out for its “exquisite slow movement, where you can have a lot of fun with ornamentation”.

As the popularity of the concerto spread, composers in Germany quickly came to appreciate the oboe’s qualities too. The result was a further slew of concertos by several unfamiliar names among the greats: Christoph Förster and the flautist Quantz tend to be a little overlooked when compared to Handel and Bach. For Katherine, two concertos stand out from the glut of “so much amazing music by Bach”: the F major solo concerto (originally for harpsichord) and the double concerto in C minor for oboe and violin. There are also three remarkably prolific composers of the period who wrote extensively for her instrument: Telemann, Christoph Graupner and Johann Friedrich Fasch, whose preferred scoring for his orchestral suites (of which well over a hundred survive) adds a pair of oboes and a bassoon to the strings, a sign of the former’s increasing ubiquity in the orchestra.

Mozart’s concerto – “so light and playful”, as Katherine puts it – was actually believed lost for nearly a century and a half, known only from the composer’s letters and in his own transcription for flute, but quickly established itself as a classic in the repertoire since its rediscovery in 1920. It is, however, one among many concertos dating from the Classical era: others include works by CPE and JC Bach, Cimarosa, Salieri and the Stamitz family, all of whom have been mentioned previously in this series. Among the new names are several composers who were themselves oboists, Ludwig August Lebrun, Josef Fiala and Carlo Besozzi among them – and Frederick William Herschel, who was a composer as well as the first President of the Royal Astronomical Society!

Katherine herself acknowledges there’s a reason why the only other oboe concerto that is as well known as Mozart’s is by Richard Strauss. “Both really capture the singing and soulful character” of her instrument, but not just in their concertos: “I also love playing [their] orchestral and chamber music,” she says. Mozart’s Oboe Quartet is “my all-time favourite piece both to play and listen to”, his Quintet for Piano and Winds is “incredibly beautiful” (as is Beethoven’s), the Gran Partita is another personal favourite … and “the oboe parts in basically all of Mozart’s operas are fantastic.” Clearly a big fan!

Once again, we have a case of an instrument with “barely any [solo] repertoire from the Romantic era”, but Katherine particularly cherishes the Three Romances for oboe and piano by both Robert and Clara Schumann: the former are “incredibly beautiful” and the latter (originally for violin) are simply “gorgeous”. On the strength of these pieces, Katherine “really would have loved a concerto or sonata by both of the Schumanns”, as there’s really very little other oboe repertoire to mention here – though an exception can perhaps be made for two Italian composers much better known for their operas entering the fray. Donizetti actually wrote a concerto for the cor anglais as well as one for oboe, and there’s also Bellini’s sole surviving concerto – which is admittedly very brief (it lasts barely seven minutes), but enormous fun and worth seeking out.

The lack of any major new oboe concerto extended well into the 20th century, but thankfully for Katherine, the orchestral repertoire makes up for this. Beethoven followed in Mozart’s footsteps, writing “amazing oboe parts” in his Eroica and Pastoral Symphonies, and Brahms continued the trend in his own Symphony No 1 and Violin Concerto. Then there’s the first truly great solo parts for cor anglais in Sibelius’ The Swan of Tuonela in 1893, which “really captures the mournful, mellow qualities of the instrument.” Ravel ensured this wasn’t a one-off with “incredible parts” for cor anglais and oboe in his orchestral works: the former is given “one of the most beautiful melodies ever written” in the slow movement of his Piano Concerto in G, following memorable solos for both instruments in Le tombeau de Couperin and Ma mère l’oye. (Katherine’s own favourite cor anglais solo, however, is in Copland’s Quiet City, in “a really interesting pairing” with a solo trumpet, “a gorgeous piece of music.”)

It's among Ravel and his compatriots that Katherine identifies another rich vein of great writing for the oboe. Poulenc writes “incredibly well for wind”: depending on your mood, she would recommend either the “fantastic” Trio for Oboe, Bassoon and Piano and Sextet for Piano and Winds, or the “heartbreaking” Oboe Sonata (that has her thinking a Poulenc cor anglais sonata would have been “an incredible addition to the repertoire”). We do, however, have an oboe concerto by Jean Françaix – another “fantastic composer for winds”– whose L’horloge de Flore (which can be translated either as The Floral Clock or Flora’s Clock) shows his knack for writing “fun and interesting (and challenging!!) [oboe] parts”.

On this side of the Channel, the oboe’s fortunes as a solo instrument really took off thanks to Leon Goossens, who enjoyed a long career both as an orchestral oboist (he was a founding member of the London Philharmonic Orchestra) and as a soloist in his own right. His artistry resulted in the composition of a wealth of early 20th century English repertoire, most notably Vaughan Williams’ Oboe Concerto, “a really beautiful piece of music” which embodies “the most perfect example of the ‘English’ sound world.” (If you are looking for “a different take on the English style,” Katherine would recommend Gipps’ Oboe Concerto, which she only discovered recently herself.) Among other music written for Goossens, Katherine is glad for Britten’s Phantasy Quartet – “really fun to play and [with] great string parts” – even if he didn’t write an oboe concerto, and among more recent repertoire for this combination of oboe with string trio (her personal favourite), she particularly enjoys the “very tricky but so rewarding” Oboe Quartet by Helen Grime.

Goossens also played an important role in the history of Strauss’ concerto, being the first oboist to record it. Katherine enjoys this piece immensely: there’s “a lot of fun” to be found in the interaction between soloist and orchestra (not least another winner of a cor anglais part), and the work is “rich and weighty” – the polar opposite to Mozart’s concerto, but just as true to the instrument’s “singing and soulful character.”

There have of course been more recent additions to the oboist’s solo repertoire: Maderna composed three concertos in his final decade, there’s both a concerto and a quartet by Carter and, at the more avant-garde end of the scale, several works by Stockhausen. When it comes to the many compositions for oboe by Heinz Holliger, however, they include works in which the soloist also plays the cor anglais and oboe d’amore – perhaps inevitably, he is himself an oboist.