Longing for Paradise

Elgar: Soliloquy (orch. Jacob); Goossens: Oboe Concerto;

Ravel: Le Tombeau de Couperin

(arr. Schmeisser);

R Strauss: Oboe Concerto

Albrecht Mayer (oboe); Bamberger Symphoniker/jakub Hr a

DG 483 6622 64:49 mins

Image is at odds with intent here. I presume it’s for publicity purposes that Albrecht Mayer, famed for his work with the Berlin Philharmonic and Lucerne Festival Orchestra and now with five DG recordings to his credit, sports tweed like the reactionary Elgar outwardly seemed to be. Yet the poignant Soliloquy, all that Elgar sketched of a three-movement suite for oboe and orchestra before he died, represents his introspective, troubled soul. Gordon Jacob’s exquisite arrangement, Mayer’s bright and beautiful tone and his sensitive partners, Jakub Hr a and the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, help make this first track seem bigger than its modest four-minute length.

It also, as Mayer says, serves as a good preface to the technical demands of Strauss’s Oboe Concerto. The interpretation is challenging, studied rather than effortlessly flowing. I respect it, and the inner orchestral details are magical, but would Strauss want so many changes of tempo? The ending springs a surprise, different from the one we know (only ‘early version’ in the track listings gives a clue).

Joachim Schmeisser’s arrangement of Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin isn’t plain sailing, either. Ravel’s orchestration, already very oboe-demanding, omitted two movements from the piano original, and the Fugue here is another moment of intense poignancy.

The fascinating programme ends, as it began, with a rarity: this time English pastoral with acid in Eugene Goossens’s one-movement concerto for his brother Leon. If only that mysterious late thrumming, like the processional in Debussy’s ‘Fêtes’ (in Nocturnes) but with cadenza-like reminiscences for oboe above, were the end of the work; it’s stunningly original. David Nice

PERFORMANCE ★★★★★

RECORDING ★★★★