PROGRAM NOTES: BOHUSLAV MARTINŮ‘s Concerto for Oboe

Posted on April 10, 2019

Photo from the BBC

PYP alumnus (2008) Max Blair, now Associate Principal Oboe with the Pittsburgh Symphony, returns to Portland to perform Martinů’s beautiful Oboe Concerto with PYP on Sunday, May 5, 2019, in the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.

Bohuslav Martinů wrote his Oboe Concerto in 1955 at the request of Czech oboist Jiri Tancibudek. Like other composers, most notably Richard Strauss, Martinů was initially hesitant to write a solo piece for oboe and turned down the request. He eventually relented and wrote the Concerto, which had its premiere in Sydney, Australia in 1956 in celebration of the Olympic games held in Melbourne that year. In the following years the piece had many performances throughout Europe, including its British premiere in 1959 by the oboist Evelyn Rothwell, one of the most famous oboists from the early 20th century and whose pedagogical materials continue to be relevant and influential to oboists today.

As a composer, Martinů is often grouped in the same category as Béla Bartók, whose understanding of his country’s folk music deeply impacted his compositional output. Indeed, much of Martinů’s music is ripe with melodies and harmonies reminiscent of his home, Czechoslovakia. There are many moments in the Oboe Concerto when the listener feels a certain folk quality and the simplicity of these moments seems to suggest that the themes could have been plucked straight from the Czech folk-music canon.

Perhaps inspired by the occasion for which the piece was written, the Oboe Concerto feels truly Olympian in terms of its demand on the oboe soloist. It stretches the performer alternately to play with great virtuosic brilliance and, at moments, with the most precious tenderness. The great variety that the relatively short piece offers is possibly one of the reasons that it remains as one of the most important concertos written for this instrument.

- By Max Blair, oboe (PYP alumnus 2008)