Neil Black
Oboist who excelled both as a soloist and in ensemble playing
NEIL BLACK, who has died aged 84, was an oboe player whose agile playing and elegant phrasing caught the ear of many a conductor.
He was equally at home in both orchestral positions and solo slots, whether in concert or on disc. The latter included a vibrant series of Vivaldi oboe concertos with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields under Neville Marriner, and a sublime accompaniment to Robert Tear on a 1972 recording of Ten Blake Songs by Vaughan Williams.
“You called me a soloist,” he told Aryn Day Sweeney, who interviewed him for the Double Reed, “but I always considered myself a chamber orchestra player first, who happened to be in the right place when the record companies had recorded all the obvious violin and piano concertos.”
Neil Cathcart Black was born in Birmingham on May 28 1932, the youngest of four children. His father, a radiologist, ran a surgery at home; to avoid disturbing the patients his mother played the spinet rather than piano.
He was educated at Rugby and at 11 started learning the oboe with Lucy Vincent, a pupil of Léon Goossens. In 1948 he was one of the early members of the National Youth Orchestra, to which he returned later as a soloist.
He had no intention of pursuing music and, after National Service, went to Exeter College, Oxford, to study Law “but soon discovered I wasn’t suited for it really”. He switched to History and became involved in Jack Westrup’s opera stagings.
Coming down, he resumed his oboe lessons, this time with Terence MacDonagh, principal oboist in the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. After six lessons MacDonagh declared him to be a colleague rather than a student, “and I don’t teach colleagues”.
He was appointed principal oboist of the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 1958, but was soon working with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, the London Mozart Players and the English Chamber Orchestra. He was principal oboe of the latter for 27 years, working under conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, Pinchas Zukerman and Murray Perahia. One of his earliest recordings was the Bach Brandenburg Concertos with the Philomusica of London under Thurston Dart. He also toured with the London Wind Trio under the auspices of the British Council.
On one occasion he was due to play the Strauss Oboe Concerto with the ECO and Jeffrey Tate at Carnegie Hall, New York, but felt that his oboe need a bit of adjustment. He went to a music shop on 48th Street, where he watched with increasing horror as an assistant attempted to fix it. “As he took the keys off he bent one or two of the bits,” recalled Black.
Eventually he scooped up the parts in a bag and fled, spending much of the night rebuilding the precious instrument in his hotel room. “For some ridiculous reason it worked,” he recalled, “which is just as well because the following morning half of New York’s freelance oboists turned up to hear the rehearsal.”
Black was a regular tutor at Sarasota Music Festival, Florida. Both there and in London he was generous with his time, making sure to introduce younger musicians to useful contacts and arranging for them to be well fed. He was a juror on the Barbirolli Oboe Competition and since 2013 he had been musical director of the Kirckman Concert Society. He also taught at the Royal Academy of Music and the Guildhall.
Black, who was appointed OBE in 1989, adored cricket and in June was at Lords to watch England draw with Sri Lanka.
He married Jill Hemingsley in 1960. That marriage was dissolved and in 1984 he married, secondly, Jan Knight, also an oboist, who survives him with two daughters and a son from his first marriage.
Neil Black, born May 28 1932, died August 14 2016