Albinoni: Oboe Concertos, Vol. 1

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Cat No: 8550739

Release Date: 12 January 1999

Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 730099573924

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: ALBINONI

Description
Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni (1671-1751)Oboe Concerti, Op. 9, Nos. 2,3,5,8,9 & 11The oboe, perfected in France around the middle of the seventeenth century,gained acceptance in Venice during the 1690s. The first known Venetian operas toinclude apart for it dated from 1692, and by 1696 at the latest it had beenheard at the Basilica of San Marco, which two years later recruited its firstpermanent player of the oboe. Several other oboists of note establishedthemselves in the city, and the four ospedali grandi (the charitableinstitutions caring for foundlings, orphans and the destitute) added theinstrument to the teaching curriculum.It was logical, given Italy's - and, indeed, Venice's - pioneering r??le inthe development of the Concerto, that sooner or later the first concerti withparts for oboes would be written. The big question was how, if at all, Should,they differ in style and form from violin concerti? For Vivaldi, as for mostItalian composers, the problem was easily resolved. In his hands the oboebecomes a kind of ersatz violin. To be sure, he takes care not to exceed thenormal compass of the instrument (running from the D above Middle C to the D twooctaves higher), remembers to insert pauses for breathing and avoids over-abruptchanges of register, but the solo part still seems remarkably violinistic - asVivaldi himself tacitly acknowledged when, on more than one occasion, heprescribed the violin as an alternative to the oboe.It was left to Vivaldi's important Venetian contemporary, Tomaso Albinoni(1671-1751), to find another way of treating the oboe in a concerto. Apart frombeing a capable Violinist, Albinoni was a singing teacher married to an operaticdiva. His experience of writing operas and cantatas decisively affected the wayin which he approached melody and instrumentation. His concerti equate the oboenot with a violin but with the human voice in an aria. Conjunct movement andsmall intervals are generally preferred to wide skips. In opening orchestralpassages the oboe does not double the first violin (as in Vivaldi concerti) butbides its time until its solo entry or else supplies an independent line. Theopening solo idea is often presented twice - the first time abortively, thesecond time with a normal continuation. This twofold presentation is a deviceborrowed straight from the operatic aria of the time.Albinoni describes these works as concerti 'with', rather than 'for' oboe.The difference is significant. Whereas in a Vivaldi oboe concerto the prime aimis to showoff the capability of the soloist, here the oboe is the partner ratherthan the dominator of the first violin - and even the second violin is notexcluded from the discourse. The spirit of give and take that exists between thetreble instruments lends these works a character that reminds one of chambermusic.Albinoni's first set of Concerti a cinque with parts for one or two oboes,published in Amsterdam as his Op. 7 in 1715, has the distinction of beingthe first such collection by an
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