The recital features celebrated local oboeist, Peter Rees and the Convenor, Duncan McGibbon.
The Oboe attracts a myth and yet it is the real evocation of the human voice. Both aspects are persued in the words of Ovid, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Dryden, Baudelaire, Wallace Stevens and Tennyson. Music by Mary Chandler, Peter Maxwell Davies, Benjamin Britten and Paul Reade is woven through the texts.
Part One : The Myth of the Reed
1. Morning from Summer’s Lease Variations for Solo Oboe by Mary Chandler (1981)
2. First Grace of Light for Solo Oboe by Peter Maxwell Davies (1991)
A Musical Instrument by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
3. Pan from Six Metamorphoses for Solo Oboe Op.49 by Benjamin Britten (1951)
William Golding’s Elizabethan translation of the story of Pan and Syrinx
4. Phaeton from Britten’s Metamorphoses Op.49
Pindar 12th Pythian Ode
5. Niobe from Britten’s Metamorphoses Op.49
Oboe Sommerso by Salvatore Quasimodo
6. Bacchus from Britten’s Metamorphoses Op.49
Dryden extract from Alexander’s Feast
7. Narcissus from Britten’s Metamorphoses Op.49
Edith Sitwell ‘What the Goose-Girl said About the Dean’
8. Arethusa from Britten’s Metamorphoses op.49
9. Noon from Summer’s Lease Variations for Solo Oboe by Mary Chandler
Part Two: The Pitch of the Real
Welcome back: intro
10. Dawn from Aspects of a Landscape by Paul Reade Seven Miniatures for
unaccompanied Oboe (1981)
Elegy for Barbara M.Pedder by Duncan McGibbon
11. Birdsong from Aspects of a Landscape
Baudelaire ‘Correspondences’
12. Bird Movements from Aspects of a Landscape
Asides on the Oboe by Wallace Stevens
13. Sun Dance from Aspects of a Landscape
Oboe Trials by Peter Rees
14.Conflict from Aspects of a Landscape
Ghazal 2765, ‘Waiting and Drunk like a Reed Flute’
15. Lament from Aspects of a Landscape
Tennyson’s ‘Dying Swan’
16. Celebration from Aspects of a Landscape
Rafael Alfaro’s Alta Maderna
17. Nightfall from Summer’s Lease Variations for Solo Oboe by Mary Chandler
Conclusion : Conrad Aiken’s ‘Music’
