Interview by Aaron GradAlbrecht_Mayer for BLOG

The oboe has great solo literature from the Baroque era and the 20th century, but it is hard to name a significant work from the Romantic period. Why do you think the oboe’s role as a concerto instrument has fluctuated?

The oboe was the solo instrument in the Baroque era. We do have a lot of oboe concertos from the Romantic period, too, but not from the big star composers. Strangely enough, in the orchestra repertoire we are still big hits with Brahms, Schubert, Schumann and so on. So it is very difficult to understand why the oboe lost its standing as a solo instrument. The clarinet stole our role in the 19th century, and later in the 20th century we got the role again, with people like Heinz Holliger really pushing composers to write new oboe concertos for us. I try, with Heinz Holliger as my model, to push the oboe in the repertoire a little bit further.

Speaking of the influence a single musician can have, what do you make of the story of oboist John de Lancie’s encounter with Richard Strauss?

I was raised with the legend of John de Lancie, that he met Strauss in Garmisch and influenced him to write an oboe concerto. And later, I met some very old musicians, and they said they always heard that John de Lancie was the one who was responsible for the composition. But the new sources would rather refute this, that de Lancie would really be the reason. Later in his life, Richard Strauss said he didn’t know anything about an American oboe player who influenced him. Either way, John de Lancie was, later in his life, a very influential and fantastic musician. So even if it is only five percent true what he really achieved with his words with Richard Strauss, then we can still be more than happy that he was there.

As the Berlin Philharmonic’s principal oboist, you surely encounter Strauss’ orchestral music often, including the famous tone poems written some fifty years before the oboe concerto. Is there a consistent style or quality that marks Strauss’ oboe writing across these different periods and genres?
He was a complete master of instrumentation, which is very rare in music, I think. Even from the very start—from the First Horn Concerto, where the oboe is important as well, to the Second Horn Concerto, which was written so much later in his life—you can see he always loved the oboe. The oboe was one of his favorite instruments, next to the French horn, which was the instrument of his father. And the Oboe Concerto is an extension of the possibilities of the oboe. The beautiful long lines should sound effortless, but they are still really difficult. He knew exactly how he could write for the oboe, what would sound good, but he really pushed to the edge of the abilities of the oboe player.

Albrecht_Mayer-2-for-BLOGStrauss was, of course, an exceptional opera composer. Do you think his ability to write for voice also carried over into his oboe writing? Or, to put it another way, do you consider there to be an especially close affinity between the oboe and the human voice?

In all interviews, I am asked if the oboe is an equivalent to the human voice. Funny enough, every instrumentalist, even a timpanist, would say, “My instrument has the resonance of the human voice.” The fact is that Johann Sebastian Bach regarded the oboe as an equivalent to the vox humana, the human voice. And a composer like Richard Strauss, who was fantastic at writing for the human voice, really knew something about lines and phrasing. The opposite of Richard Strauss is Beethoven. Beethoven had absolutely no idea how to write for the human voice. Of course Beethoven was one of the greatest composers ever, but he had no idea about the human voice. Richard Strauss did. The big oboe solo in the slow movement of the Horn Concerto, for example, is one of the best lines ever composed. It is so beautiful and so perfect, but even then it is pushed so far. It is really an extension of the human voice, because he was writing phrases that no singer could sing. I am quite sure that he knew some oboe players who could do circular breathing perfectly. Because later, when oboe players tried to play the concerto, everybody was complaining that it is nearly unplayable because of the breathing problem.

Can you explain that term, circular breathing, for people who may not have encountered it before?

Circular breathing, or “permanent breathing” as its called in German, is a very old technique, something like 2,500 years old. It is a technique whereby you blow air into an instrument and at the same time take air in through your nose.

Will you be doing circular breathing in your performance of the Strauss Concerto?

It is absolutely essential. If you can’t do circular breathing and you play this concerto, by the end you are dead.