Oboe dueting, and the Zelenkas
Friday September 28 2007
I’ve rediscovered the joy of playing duets, and can’t wait to get to work on these Zelenkas. On Sunday I’ll rehearse #2 with Tyler Stollberg, an up and coming sophomore here at the University of Oregon who has a tremendous amount of talent. He also is very curious about reedmaking techniques, and enjoys reedmaking almost as much as me (perhaps more!?!? Isn’t THAT… a scary thought!) He’s also helping me with the cane preparation, and we’ve talked a lot of oboe reeds already. I hope we cane become good reedmaking buddies, and “gel together” in our playing. He’s got a lot there, and it’ll be exciting to see how he develops as a player in the future.
Nat wrote on the comments how long the Zelenkas are. OH MY GOSH…. I CAN…’T BELIEVE… how long they are. And they were originally written for oboe too! (#3 is for Violin and oboe). How can this possibly be? What was he thinking? Did oboes back in those days have chops of steel? This past spring when I was visiting Arizona State University, I saw that in back-to-back weeks, Martin Schuring was performing all 6 of them on 2 separate recitals. 3 sonatas each. I can’t even imagine what kind of preparation he must do in order to build up that much endurance. It hurts my mouth even thinking about it.
I have a recording that I’d never even heard of until I found it in the library of Holliger and Bourgue playing with Klaus Thunemann on Bassoon and Christian Jaccottet on Harpsichord. A very very fine recording. I have said it before and I’ll say it again. Holliger is one of the finest Baroque interpreters of our time.
Jill Cathey
Sep 30, 2007
I understand that baroque oboes were much less resistant than modern oboes, so they could just play and play. That would make sense since all those baroque parts you have to have chops of steel to make it though! I played a Zelenka (it had a hard bassoon part, so maybe it was 5) about 8 years ago on a faculty recital, it was really hard. I was playing the second part - it was a fun thing although the bsn player didn’t really practice at all (obviously).
nat*
Sep 30, 2007
Yup, Jill! The no. 5 is the only one where I actually NOTICED the bassoon part so it’s probably the hardest of the lot 
How wonderful it must be to play on a baroque oboe, without the feeling that the brain’s going to explode or something! Just wondering, are the oboists the worst of the lot when it comes to issues of resistance (especially by the reed or instrument)? Are brass players like that too?
lkleraq
Jan 24, 2010
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Sep 29, 2007
Haha, yeah those oboists those days are crazy. Holliger’s great, I’ve got that CD too. If i’m not wrong, the no. 5 has a killer part for the bassoon, so at least all of the musicians suffer together ;P
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