Vivaldi - Oboe Concertos Volume 1 [Schilli/Jonas-Failoni Chamber Orchestra Budapest] Naxos have issued the complete Vivaldi Oboe Concertos on two discs, this includes all the Double Oboe Concertos [with Diethelm Jonas on the second Oboe here], and i feel that it's these Double Oboe Concertos that are the best thing here, each has a certain character, and once you get familiar with certain tunes in certain movements, you just can't get them out of your head, Vivaldi created roughly 500 Concertos, just the sheer number, all created in his Baroque style, can sound very 'samey', but you can start to pick out favourite bits, unlike say the Bassoon [which Vivaldi composed a fair number of Concertos for], which i don't think really works for Vivaldi, the Oboe on the other hand works just great.
Stefan Schilli i believe is German, this disc was recorded in 1992, as is usual with Naxos discs, the front covers have a tendency to leave a lot to be desired, they aren't very inspired in my mind.
Well i so much enjoyed three separate movements on this disc, the opening movement of RV 534, the slow middle movement of RV 452, and the opening movement of the Double Concerto RV 536, and it's this Concerto i would like to talk about, the oboes really just double up, they don't play any different from each other, or play separately from each other, the opening is just pure genius invention, the two oboes play piercingly high treble, i guess it's in their nature, it's quite a high instrument, and the strings fill in the oboe silences with downward string notes [0:00-0:31], after a string tutti, the oboes come back in, and play a nice variation of the opening [0:53-1:10], with cleverly added embellishments, and this is the way that the music continues, orchestral tuttis punctuated by oboe solos, each new oboe solo seems to become slightly more varied and virtuosic than the last, the third solo is the best [1:27-1:49], adding some nice higher 'flutterings', and the last solo [2:06-2:26], returns to the more flatter unembellished opening, once you get this in your head and heart, it becomes really endearing.
Here's Christopher Palameta & John Abberger playing the Double Oboe Concerto RV 536 on YouTube.
