Review:

on 2011-02-20 CharlesMartel Said:

Tomaso Albinoni was a Venetian-born composer about whom relatively little is known, especially in comparison with his contemporary and fellow-Venetian, Antonio Vivaldi. Albinoni's best-known works were his twelve oboe concerti, collectively called Opus 9. Six of them are contained on this CD from Naxos. A volume 2, containing the other six, is also available. However, to my mind, this volume contains the better concerti, especially numbers five, three and eleven.

The oboe was a relatively new instrument around the latter part of the seventeenth century. It had originated in France in the middle of that century and had spread slowly across Europe, becoming accepted in Venice in the 1690's. While not the first to use it, Albinoni was the first to make such widespread use of it. His oboe concerti were first published in 1715 and were the first to be published by an Italian. The twelve concerti are broken down into three distinct groups - four concerti for strings alone; four concerti for strings plus one oboe; and four concerti for strings plus two oboes. The pieces were an instant success and the format was copied by other composers, most notably Vivaldi himself.

The comparative novelty of the instrument posed something of a problem for its arrangement into a concerto. Most concerti at the time, having first been popularised in Venice itself, were written for violins. Unlike Vivaldi, Albinoni did not treat the oboe as if it were a violin and write pieces for it which differed little from violin pieces except for the addition of breathing stops. Albinoni's use of the oboe is more akin to that of the human voice - hardly surprising since he was a singing teacher who had married an opera singer. If one listens to the opening movement of the third concerto, the long plaintiff, quivering note of the oboe sounds almost like a human voice. Albinoni frequently made use of the similarity when composing for the instrument. However, the third movement of the same concerto finds the oboe sounding more like a horn, perhaps in deference to his great patron of the time, the hunting fanatic Elector Max II Emmanuel of Bavaria.

It is often remarked how Albinoni himself described these concerti as being with the oboe rather than for it. That remark gives much insight into how he treated the instrument and the soloist - as the partner of the principal violin rather than as a means of showing off the talents of the oboist. This is particularly noteworthy in the fifth concerto - one of my favourites - where the woodwind instrument blends seamlessly into the structure of the piece overall. My other favourite is the eleventh, a lively and sparkly piece in B Flat Major (a key Albinoni himself regarded in his notes as a bright and cheerful one). This carries with it something of the mood of a festival. I can just imagine this being played at the famous (notorious?) Venetian masked balls which were popularised at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries.

This collection is released by the Naxos label which has done, and continues to do an excellent job of releasing classical music at a reasonable price. The oboist is Anthony Camden, backed up by Julia Girdwood, and the ensemble is the London Virtuosi under the baton of John Georgiadis. For some who are fresh to this sort of piece, you may find your initial reaction to this sort of formal Baroque music is that it is a bit stiff. Listen to it, and you will soon discover the liveliness and passion which makes it so compelling.
Rating: 7/10