A journey through the golden age of the oboe quartet
Released earlier this year in January, Quartetto Bernardini, featuring the HIPP-specialist Alfredo Bernardini, who has made so many excellent recordings of baroque repertoire, turns to the classical oboe quartet. This recording is a gem for multiple reasons, including Bernardini’s use of not one, but five historical oboes. The tuning of the instruments required the ensemble to adjust for each work, representing Johann Christian Bach, Mozart, Charles Bochsa, Justus Johann Friedrich Dotzauer, Alessandro Rolla, and Georg Druschetzki.
Those names were somewhat new to me too. Yet, along with the sense of completeness that was addressed here with multiple oboes, the notes are a rich read. I started with the Dotzauer quartet, the longest quartet on the record, where the composer gives the oboe a break in one of the movements. Having studied the oboe for a semester in college, I knew how lightheaded I became when practicing. The very humane touch by a composer brings light to his personality and the pragmatism in his day.
The Mozart work is shorter in just three movements; the oboe sound is more piercing; the writing is far more virtuosic in nature for both the violin and the oboe. The opening movement reveals this quartet’s attention to dynamics and phrasing; the results they achieve are done with the highest levels of taste.
The Bach example is a two-movement work. The opening Allegro is interesting for the patterned figure Bach gives the violin at the opening, allowing the oboe to clearly take the melody as the focal point. The use of dynamics here again deserve mention; the style is so different from the period that preceded it; this group does equally well in getting louder and softer over time to shape a phrase, but also in the surprise accents. I couldn’t help but think how much fun composers must have had with these elements. The acoustic environment captured on record does an excellent job at allowing these dynamic gestures to take full effect. I feel I am as close to the performers that I want to be while also enjoying the acoustics of their space.
Like the Bach, the Rolla offering is presented in two movements. The notes do not discuss the structure of the piece; starting with a slow movement I wonder if a portion has been lost? Bernardini allows himself in the slow movement to tickle us with his outstanding sound by changing the color of his sound with some vibrato, playing with pressure on the reed. I am no expert in oboe technique but generally we don’t hear HIPP oboists using this with baroque repertoire. The effect is richer, I thought, with this historical oboe over a modern one. The other remarkable thing that happens in the faster conclusion of this piece is how the oboe and violin match one another in timbre from the end of one phrase to the opening of another.
The final single movement piece is unique in its style from an earlier time. The composer, Druschetzki, applies Lutheran hymn (not surprisingly used by J.S. Bach) in a contrapuntal setting; it wasn’t surprising to read in the notes that he nearly exclusively wrote religious music. The chorale-texture allows this ensemble to sing in a way that the more virtuosic pieces did not, the luxury still present with their gorgeous sound.
I enjoyed hearing works by composers new to me; I enjoyed well-produced sound and production value. This recording is exceptionally strong in its documentation of the role of HIPP in not only being entirely sensitive to an earlier instrumental sound world but doing so with interpretations that represent the highest levels of art. And yes, the lightly soured note at 1:10 into the Mozart Rondeau speaks to why the oboe would further evolve after Mozart’s time as composers would write continually more virtuosically for winds.
