So I need to play the first major aria in Ich Habe Genug this weekend, but nobody seems to have an oboe part! The church assumed I had a part. Does anyone have a part sitting around at their home? Could anyone be kind enough to scan it into a PDF or something and email it to me? I need help!
I’ve been recently listening to Marilyn Zupnik’s Classic Oboe Etudes, which has her demonstrating some Barret, Brod, and Ferling etudes. Her sound is lovely, full of life and very inspiring. I would love to take a lesson some time with her!
Meanwhile, it says she played principal in the Minnesota Orchestra. Looking at the Minnesota Orchestra, Basil Reeve is listed as the principal, stating that he was co-principal (assuming co’ing with Ms. Zupnik) in 1980, and then recently taking over as sole principal recently in 2004. These leads me to wonder, where did Marilyn Zupnik end up at? Does anyone know? Patty?
My top joint is plastic. That means it doesn’t have the same absorption or drainage that a wooden horn would have. (I believe the grains in the wood encourage spit to drain downward, thus preventing flooding.) I have one AquaNix bowl in my top octave which helps quite a bit, a mechanism patented by John de Lancie and Mr. Weber and available from Mr. Weber. However, recently I’ve been having flooding everywhere else but the octave vents, which has been frustrating me to no end.
One of my former teachers, Jan Eberle of Michigan State University plays exclusively on two very old all-plastic Lorees and sounds great on them. In fact, hearing her on the two horns had a major influence on my decision to buy a plastic top joint oboe. I remember that she once gave a studio class on flooding problems, and one of her solutions was to use frothy dishwashing soap water applied with a feather to solve this problem. So I tried it.
The combination works like a charm. Currently, Korea is soaking in humidity, and it’s hard to get anything really dried out. Since I spread soapy froth into my horn with a feather, I’ve had no problems. Thanks Professor Eberle! See? I really did pay attention in studio class!
I wish I had another chance to study with Professor Eberle. She has an interesting background having studied with de Lancie at Curtis, and later with Mr. Mack (like Ferillo) while in the Akron Symphony. I believe her to be just as big of an oboe nerd as I am, and is an encyclopedia of not only oboe-related information, but music in general. (She played piccolo professionally as well!) But by the time I began studying with her, it was my senior year of college, and I had already decided to pursue a career in other areas besides music. (I barely practiced for my senior recital, and really blew it.)
If anyone is looking for a graduate school with a very demanding teacher (and a true expert in the truest sense of the word) I would highly recommend Michigan State with Jan Eberle. She certainly covers all aspects of oboe, from Reedmaking, to gouging, to air control, to instrument maintainance, and more.
While sitting in Starbucks for the past 2.5 hours, I’ve heard de Lancie’s recording of the Marcello, as well as an unidentifiable recording of Mozart’s Gran Partita, and currently playing is an unidentifiable Brandenberg Concerto #2. Not a bad program for a coffee shop!
My Senior year of college I was getting ready to graduate. By this time, I had decided not to continue with the oboe, and was more interested in the academic aspects of music. (My Junior year of college I blew out my jaw to TMJ from biting ridiculously large reeds. For the first time in my life, I took the time to actually learn how to study and be a good student, thus peaking my interest in areas such as Greek history.) Since I had transfered into Michigan State, I was still lacking many Freshman basic courses, such as American history, and Musicology Survey 101, along with some senior courses like Music Theory 401 and 400-level Musicology courses. It goes without saying, my academic schedule was “interesting”
That year, I signed up for musicology 401 and 101 with the same professor, Dr. Anna Harwell Celenza, who had a reputation as a very “demanding” teacher, but a good one. Always having a strong curiosity in history, I thought music history might be an interesting topic for me, although my music history courses at NEC were a complete bore! (My instructor was a bit more interested with the sound of his own voice, rather than the actual course itself.)
Professor Celenza was perhaps the best academic instructor I ever had during my college years. The information presented in her courses was so complete and filled in music like I had never heard nor seen before. We quickly formed a friendship and I would make regular visits her office with “questions behind the questions”. We had discussions about Goethe, Bach, and many other topics. She is one of the most brilliant minds I have ever had the honor of encountering, and will be forever in her debt. As my Senior year began to come to a close, I began to weigh my options and was profoundly interested in pursuing musicology further. She offered to take me under her wing and allow me to pursue a Master’s in Musicology under her guidance, and so I began the application process.
A few weeks ago she came running up to me in the hall to let me know that one of the Graduate Assistantships had been cut, and thus there were no new assistantships available for me. She was rather disgusted at this news and very apologetic to me, and I took it in stride, figuring that everything happens for a purpose. We discussed me coming to Korea, studying Korean, and perhaps preparing to write a Thesis related to Korean ethnomusicology. That was 5 years ago, and I’m still in Korea (although not for long.)
What Professor Celenza did leave with me was an immeasurable passion for musicology. It carries over into my performance, and research of performance and stylistic period techniques, topics I enjoy reading for fun.
For the past 5 years in Korea, I have continued to develop my writing and academic skills. I have been a professional editor for the past 3 years, and have regular customers, including one of the largest translation centers in Korea. I write a bi-monthly column for a small magazine titled the Journal, and also regularly edit the program notes and other press release materials for the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by the world-renowned conductor Myung-whun Chung. Of all the jobs I get to edit, these are always the most enjoyable, and interesting to me.
My interest in Musicology continues to grow. Whenever I buy a CD, the first thing I do is tear open the case and read the CD liner notes. If a CD doesn’t have liner notes (or good liner notes), I feel ripped off. Occasionally you even find liner notes that are completely wrong, or notes that you know the author just kind of “winged it”, but usually they are informative and enriching.
I recently blogged about the Casals Festival CD with Mozart’s Divertimento No 11 K. 251 featuring Tabuteau on the oboe. The CD also includes Symphony 29 K. 201, and Serenade in G Major “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik”. The program notes in this CD are particularly enriching, and leave you in further awe of such a quality recording for its age (1951).
Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven: The Trinity According to Casals
“The Prades Festival will take place in Perpignan“: these were the naive yet fact justified terms in which various American publications announced the holding, in 1951 of the Second Festival organized around Pablo Casals. But what does moest French Catalonia represent when viewed from across the Atlantic? After the human and artistic success of the Bach Festival in the previous year, no one - Casals least of all - wished to interrupt an event having such international repercussions. Some administrative difficulties, which had slipped several false notes into the perfect score of 1950, as well as a search for better acoustics, had encouraged the organizers to choose Perpignan and its Palace of the Kings of Majorca as the venue for the concerts. Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven were on the program.
It is significant that the opening concert, on July 7, started like the opening concert of 1950 with the First Suite for Solo Cello of Bach, but Mozart and Beethoven were overwhelmingly better represented: Casals conducted no less than eleven different Mozart Concertos (including the Sinfonia Concertante KV 364) between July 7 and 26; Beethoven was represented by the complete Sonatas and Variations for Cello and Piano (with Casals and Rudolf Serkin) and by a number of Piano Trios. Also scheduled were Alexander Schneider’s interpretation of Bach’s Violin concerto BWV 1042 which had been “forgotten” in 1950, and a repeat performance by Serkin of the Goldberg Variations that had tremendously moved the Catalan cellist at the previous Festival. And let us stress that there was also a good deal of vocal music. As in 1950, a large number of instrumental soloists took part. Indeed, many of them had already been present in 1950. Dame Myra Hess, Clara Haskil, Yvonne Lefebure, Erica Morini, Isaac Stern, John Wummer, Louis Cahuzac, Mieczyslaw Horzowski, Serkin, and Eugune Istomin each played a Mozart concerto, while Stern and William Pimrose were the soloists in the Sinfonia Concertante.
We must call attention, however, to the exceptional quality of the Orchestra: Alexander Schneider, First Violin, led among others Luben Yordanoff (future Violin Solo of the Orchestre de Paris); Enrique Casals (Pablo’s brother) led the Second Violins, including Beatrice Dassin (the wife of movie director Jules Dassin); Albert Bertschmann, First Viola, was seconded by Karen Tuttle and Milton Thomas; Paul Tortelier was “first among equals” in a strong Cello section including his wife Maud Martin, Madeline Foley, Erling Bengtsson (not yet known as Blondal-Bengtsson), Daniel Saidenberg, and Rudolf von Tobel; Julius Levine was in the Double Bass section; John Wummer, Flute, and Marcel Tabutea, Oboe, were assisted by their young pupils; then too, there was Louis Cahuzac, Clarinet, and the very young Andre Sennedat, Bassoon; to the surprise of the French, the French Horn section was entrusted to two Americans, a Mr. and Mrs. Wilbur; Roger Delmotte, Trumpet, Serge Baudo, Timpani, and Robert Veryron-Lacroix, basso continuo Harpsichord, also numbered among the group. This long but incomplete list has the advantage of helping us understand the difficulties that arose now and then despite Casals’ truly unifying charisma; in these differences of generations and mentalities played all-important roles. Again, the professionalism of the American musicians ran contrary to the dilettante attitude of of some of the French musicians - especially since Casals was a conductor who rehearsed the orchestra at great length, paying close attention to details and requiring absolute concentration for absolute effectiveness, even (perhaps above all) with a work like Eine klein Nachtmusik. These frictions carried over to those opposing the American “Executive Committee” headed by Alexander Schneider, and its French counterpart, headed by Doctor Rene Puig (which were to bringabout the departure of Schneider at the end of the 1952 Festival). Aldready known for his outspokenness, Paul Tortelier shouted at a stunned Erica Morini during a rehearsal and asked his great elder Louis Cahuzac to cut short the arpeggios adorning his cadenza to the Mozart Clarinet Concerto. Also it was because Tabuteau and Cahuzac could not get along together that the Quintet for Piano and Winds KV 452, performed on July 9 with Horszowski at the piano, was not recorded, contrary to plan.
On the other hand, Columbia did record and public Mozart’s Symphony 29, Divertimento No. 11 (in which Tabuteau shone), and Eine kleine Nachtmusik, which had been given during the concerts on July 15, 21, and 9, respectively. Aside from the concertos and the works mentioned earlier, the only purely symphonic works by Mozart that Casals conducted in 1951 were the Adagio and Fugue KV 546 and the Symphony No. 39 KV 543, both on July 26. Thus, the three recordings on this disc represent a precious intermediate document of Casals’ conducting in the major repertoire, between his Beethoven and Brahms recordings in 1928/1929 (with the Orquestra Pau Casals or with the London Symphony Orchestra)and those carried out in Puerto Rico or in Marlboro - Particularly the last six Mozart Symphonies (partially republished in SONY’s “Marlboro Music Festival - 40th Anniversary”, CD SMK 47294). They even echo Casals’ concerts in Barcelona, for (apparently with the sole exception of the Adagio and Fugue) he had already conducted there all the symphonic works of Mozart that he played in July 1951, and then, according to a similar logic, programing many concertos (With Jelly d’Aranyi, Jacques Thibaud, Wanda Landowska, Frederic Lamond, and Mieczyslaw Horszowski, among the soloists), divertimentos, and symphonies as well as such vocal works as Exsultate, Jubilate, excerpts from the opera Idomeneo, Re di Creta, and even the oratorio Davidde Penitente KV 469.
While the artistic splendors of the interpretations of the 1951 Festival certainly consolidated the ongoing legend of Casals, it did not recapture the unattainable purity of the First Festival. The open-air courtyard of the Palace of the Kings of Majorca did offer more satisfactory acoustics than the iEglise Saint-Pierre in Prades - except when the Tramontane wind or its opposite, the wind from the sea, was blowing (The concert on July 8 even had to be canceled because of the rain). but most of the time the summer heat-wave typical of the eastern Pyrenees was in full swing. On the other hand, the rehearsals and the recordings to which the present discs bear witness took place in the Perpignan Municipal Theater (adapted, more or less, to the circumstances), the automobile traffic outside being diverted.
Two supplementary concerts were given on July 28 and 29, one in the Perpignan Cathedral, the other in the Abbey Church of Saint-Michel de Cuixa, several kilometers from Prades. As in 1950, the Festival ended with El Cant dels Ocells. This was the start of a turning back for the Festival, since in 1952 and 1953 all the concerts were given in Saint-Michel de Cuixa; in 1954 they returned to the Eglise Saint-Pierre, where they continued until Casals’ final departure in 1966. As it had been founded in Prades, the Festival was duty-bound to go back there.
-Remy Louis (translation by Robert Cushman)
I posted in a few days about interesting noises in recordings. For those curious about where I thought the rubber ducky squeak is, its in Milhaud’s Two Sketches, right at the 4:55 mark. Has anyone ever played this? Does it really say, “Squeeze rubber ducky HERE!”?
I’ll look for the other place I thought I heard the ducky reappear. It might have been on the French quintets CD
