Benjamin Britten 6 Metamorphoses after Ovid Op.49 for Oboe Solo (Boosey & Hawkes)

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meanwhile I continue to derive much pleasure from your previous issues - especially the Britten compilation, which is superb." Raymond Monk, Leicester, UK Britten composed this work for solo oboe for the oboist Joy Boughton who premiered the piece at the Aldeburgh festival in 1951. The 6 movements are programmatic in both their suggestive titles and musical devices. For example, the first movement, “Pan: who played upon the reed pipe which was Syrinx, his beloved,” uses a free rhythm to evoke the mythological character. In the second movement, “Phaethon, who rode upon the chariot of the sun for one day and was hurled into the river Padus by a thunderbolt” Britten composed a fast, moving rhythm to represent the flying chariot. Britten used the expressive marking piagendo or “weeping” for the third movement “Niobe who, lamenting the death of her fourteen children, was turned into a mountain.” The remaining movements are: (4) “Bacchus, at whose feasts is heard the noise of gaggling women's tattling tongues and shouting out of boys,” (5) ”Narcissus, who fell in love with his own image and became a flower” and (6) “Arethusa, who, flying from the love of Alpheus the river god, was turned into a fountain.” Over his career, Bourgue was no stranger to the recording studio. With over 28 albums to his name, he championed oboe works from the early Baroque including works by Albinoni, Bach and Vivaldi to the 20 th century: Poulenc 's Oboe Sonata, Britten 's Metamorphoses and Dutilleux 's Oboe Sonata among others. Britten composed this work for solo oboe in 1951, completing it in time for its premiere during the Aldeburgh Festival of that year. As had become traditional in the early Festivals, there was a concert on Thorpeness Meare, with soloists and audiences alike in rowing boats, and the Six Metamorphoses were first heard on the water: the intrepid soloist was Janet Boughton. As Sarah Bardwell describes in this week’s film, this concert was recently recreated with Nicholas Daniel as the boat-bound soloist.

The level of enthusiasm didn’t abate after Cumberbatch was gone, with the Françaix and Mozart pieces beautifully played and warmly received. But the best was left for the encore, for which Cumberbatch returned to the stage and read Eichendorff’s poem Mondnacht, before the quartet gave a gorgeous rendition of an arrangement of Schumann’s famous setting. Leicester International Festival, and teaches in the UK and in Germany, where is he Professor of Oboe at the Musikhochschule,Six Metamorphoses after Ovid (Op. 49) is a piece of program music for solo oboe written by English composer Benjamin Britten in 1951. Three excellent performances of this work - two contemporary and one historical, the first broadcast performance - are showcased here. I am not going to express a preference for any particular version - suffice it to say that all three are essential for an in-depth appreciation of this great work. Bacchus, "at whose feasts is heard the noise of gaggling women's tattling tongues and shouting out of boys." The French oboist Maurice Bourgue has died at the age of 83. ‘His tone is delicate and sweet, with the subtlest of gradations’ is how Gramophone’s Lionel Salter described Bourgue’s recording of the Poulenc Oboe Sonata (Decca), a work he frequently performed and recorded.

Born in Avignon, Bourgue left to study at the Paris Conservatory, where he studied under Étienne Baudo. Shortly after he joined the Algiers Radio Orchestra during the Algerian war in the 1950s. After winning the Geneva Competition in 1963, Bourgue rose to prominence to British audiences when in 1965 he won the oboe section of the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra International Wind Competition where he gave the premiere of Malcolm Arnold’s Fantasy for Oboe. Under the direction of conductor Charles Münch, Bourgue became Principal Oboe of the Orchestre de Paris – a position he held for 12 years. Bourgue's reputation as a virtuoso oboist earned him an international following and he performed as a soloist with some of the world's most distinguished orchestras, including the London Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, under the batons of Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim and Riccardo Chailly. it is a major reference document that needs to be regarded as an important contribution to Britten studies."The piece was inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses. It is dedicated to oboist Joy Boughton, daughter of Benjamin Britten's friend and fellow composer Rutland Boughton, who gave the first performance at the Aldeburgh Festival on 14 June 1951. [1] Structure [ edit ] Each of the six sections is based on a character from Roman mythology who is briefly described: [1]