Quartet For Oboe And Strings

arranged for Oboe and Piano-The Oboe Quartet in F major K. 370/368b was written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in early 1781. The quartet originally arranged for oboe violin viola and cello is presented in this edition for Oboe with Piano accompaniment. In 1780 Mozart was invited to Munich to visit Elector Karl Theodor who had commissioned the opera Idomeneo for a carnival celebration. While in Munich Mozart renewed an acquaintance with Friedrich Ramm a virtuoso oboist in the Munich orchestra. It was for Ramm that Mozart composed the quartet in order to show off his virtuosity and the improvements that had been made to the oboe at that time. One way that this piece showed off theinstrument was the use of the 'high F' above the staff a note rarely played in any repertoire previously written for the oboe. This piece is a work of chamber music but it has elements that harken to other musical genres and requires a fair amount of virtuosity. Because of its large amount of virtuosic playing on the part of the oboe and the large degree to which the strings simply accompany the oboist it almost resembles a concerto but with only with four players instead of an entire orchestra. Despite this there are also a number of places within the work that require ensemble playing for example the famous 13-bar passage in the finale in which the oboe plays in common time against a 6/8 accompaniment.

Work for Oboe Violin Viola and Cello. Parts available: CH56341.This quartet was commissioned by the Institute of Contemporary Arts and written in the autumn of 1967. It is dedicated to Lady Norton and is the second of LennoxBerkeley’s three works written with the oboist the late Janet Craxton in mind the other two being his Sonatina OP 61 and Sinfonia Concertante OP 84.The work begins with a fairly extended introduction leading without a breakinto an Allegro. The whole composition is based on the internal of a third (sometime major sometimes minor) which is heard in the opening phrase of the introduction and again in the main theme of the Allegro though here in atotally different context. The allegro is in more or less traditional sonata form. The middle movement is a kind of Scherzo growing out of a rhythmical figure for the strings and a rapid arpeggio (major and minor chords) forthe oboe. This is a Presto; a more relaxed middle section corresponding to the Trio in a classical work is followed by a much shortened version of the Scherzo. The last movement is brief but very slow all four instrumentstaking up in turn a gently rocking figure that moves to and fro between two notes always a major or minor third apart. The music becomes more animated but returns to the opening figure and dies away each instrument droppingout one after the other leaving the cello alone in the last bar.