Introducing the oboe soloist, Robert Orr for the Forsyth Barr concert ‘Sublime Schubert’

It is a great privilege to be invited by the DSO to be the soloist in Mozart’s sunny and lyrical oboe concerto.

This work is famous amongst all of us who play the instrument, but it is perhaps a little less well known to concert audiences. We oboists come to know it primarily as an audition test-piece where the expositions of the first and second movements are often asked for when trying out for an orchestral job. It is in this context and also in teaching it to my students that I have spent most of my time with this music. It is wonderful therefore to have the opportunity step back, reset and look again at the oboe concerto as if I were approaching it for the first time.

It is no secret that Mozart was passionate about composing opera and I believe that it is in his writing for voice that the oboe concerto has its roots Like all of Mozart’s music, it requires getting the balance of technical precision and character “just right” so that it is neither just a technical exercise, nor overdone as if it were a flashy showpiece, solely for demonstrating the abilities the performer. The second movement of the concerto, with its finely-spun melodic lines is perhaps an obvious comparison to an aria for soprano, but the outer two movements can also be characterised as coloratura pieces for soprano voice. We oboists owe a great deal to Mozart’s flair for vocal writing. Indeed, the theme of the concerto’s third movement was reused by Mozart some years later in an aria from his opera “Il Seraglio.”

But, all of this is academic without an orchestra and a live audience. Musical performance is a space where performers and audience alike get to live “in the moment” and I look forward to not only sharing this concerto with you, but also working together with the DSO and conductor Benjamin Bayl in rehearsals to find our way of playing Mozart’s Oboe Concerto together.