Woodwinds… Great music for Oboes, Flutes, Clarinets & Bassoons.

The Music

The Words

Hello everyone. Welcome to the ‘Classical For Everyone’ Podcast. Five hundred years of incredible music.

My name is Peter Cudlipp and if you enjoy any music at all then I’m convinced you can enjoy classical music. You don’t have to… and perhaps more importantly you don’t need to… but there really is some amazing music just waiting for you to discover! One of the challenges is where to start when there is just so much music to choose from… and it could all get annoyingly random… so each show is going to be tied together with a bit of a theme.

The music playing in the background is the slow section from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Oboe Quartet from 1780… and that is one of the pieces coming up in this episode… all of which feature instruments collectively known as ‘woodwinds’… in particular the oboe, the flute, the bassoon and the clarinet… I’m going to to play you music by John Adams, Claude Debussy, Carl Maria von Weber, some more Mozart, Antonio Vivaldi and Carl Vine. Ok. So on with this episode of the Classical For Everyone podcast featuring music written for woodwind instruments.

Like many terms in classical music ‘woodwind’ is a vague catch all that is now somewhat out of date. Most of the instruments were originally made of wood and the sound was produced by directing air into and through them… the ‘wind’ part of the term. But the flute has been made from metal for close to two hundred years. And there are all sorts of new materials used in the production of the other instruments of the woodwind family today. But tradition is strong. So, like everyone else I’ll just keep using the collective noun… ‘woodwinds’.

So, to begin this overview of music featuring woodwind instruments here is a section of a piece by American composer John Adams. He called it ‘Gnarly Buttons’ and it is for a solo clarinet and small group of accompanying instruments. The clarinet was the first instrument Adams played and he was taught it by his father. He wrote a note about the work around the time he composed it in 1996…"Gnarly" means knotty, twisted or covered with gnarls...your basic village elder's walking stick. In  school kid parlance it takes on additional connotations of something to be admired: "awesome," "neat," "fresh," etc. etc. The "buttons" are probably lingering in my mind from Gertrude Stein's collection of poems… "Tender Buttons," but my evoking them here also acknowledges our lives at the end of the 20th century as being largely given over to pressing buttons of one sort or another.  He also notes that clarinets don’t have buttons so the title does not have anything to do with that. Here then is the final section of John Adams ‘Gnarly Buttons’. The section is titled ‘Put your loving arms around me’ and Adams describes it as… a simple song, quiet and tender up front, gnarled and crabbed at the end. It is about 8 minutes long and here is performed by the London Sinfonietta, conducted by John Adams, and the clarinet is played by Michael Collins.

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That was the final section of John Adams ‘Gnarly Buttons’. performed by the London Sinfonietta conducted by John Adams and the solo clarinet was  played by Michael Collins.

Next up on this episode featuring woodwind instruments is a bit of flute music. Which is perhaps a slightly too casual way to describe what I am going to play you. If you searched for ‘classical music best known for the flute part’ … you would probably get French composer Claude Debussy’s ‘Prelude to ‘An afternoon of a Faun’’ from 1894. And the languid solo flute line that begins the piece has pretty much come to represent a school of music which was given the name ‘impressionism’… music that creates the sense of a subject rather than a specific description. A quick bit of background. ‘An Afternoon of a Faun’ was a famous poem by Stephane Mallarme about, not surprisingly, a faun…  which is a mythological creature that is a cross between a human and a goat, In the poem the Faun wakes up after a particularly sensual dream and then tells its story. Debussy created an eleven minute orchestral piece made up of a series of musical responses based on the poem. Hence the name… ‘Prelude to An Afternoon of a Faun’ with ‘prelude’ meaning here just a short piece of music.Here is Bernard Haitink conducting the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. I wish I could tell you who plays the flute part but the internet has let me down. Claude Debussy’s ‘Prelude to ‘An afternoon of a Faun’’.

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That was Bernard Haitink conducting the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra with Claude Debussy’s ‘Prelude to ‘An afternoon of a Faun’’.

If you play or ever played the clarinet, the name Carl Maria von Weber will perhaps be known to you. In terms of music written for the clarinet his concertos of 1811 and 1812 are still regarded as classics and are still widely performed and recorded. And these are almost perfect examples of what the ‘concerto’ would come to mean in the 19^th century and still remains the way the term is most frequently applied today… A composition written for a virtuoso solo instrument accompanied by an orchestra or other ensemble. Here is the opening section of Carl Maria Von Weber’s first concerto for clarinet and orchestra. It is about 7 minutes long and here is the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra with Charles Neidich playing the clarinet.

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That was the first section of Carl Maria Von Weber’s first concerto for clarinet and orchestra. And that recording was of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra with Charles Neidich playing the clarinet.

Now you might wonder how a song from an opera can make its way into this woodwinds-focused episode but the clue is in the title of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Emmanuel Schikaneder’s ‘Die Zauberflöte’… or, in English, ‘The Magic Flute’. Near the end of the first half the character Prince Tamino finds himself in a dark wood filled with menacing animals and he uses the magic flute he has been given to calm them and sings about it. Please trust me when I say that in a good production this is just a gorgeous moment. Tamino sings about his flute ‘Wie Stark ist nicht dein Zauberton’… ‘Isn’t your magic sound powerful’. Fritz Wunderlich the singer. The orchestra is the Berlin Philharmonic and the conductor is Karl Böhm. Mozart’s ‘The Magic Flute’.

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That was Fritz Wunderlich singing ‘Isn’t your magic sound powerful’ from Mozart’s ‘The Magic Flute’.  The orchestra was the Berlin Philharmonic and the conductor was Karl Böhm.

Ok. A bit more Mozart. This is the bit I was playing as I introduced the episode. In 1780 he met the oboe virtuoso Friedrich Ramm when he was in Munich and he wrote an oboe quartet for him… which is a work in three sections for oboe, violin, viola and cello. Is there anything more that really needs to be said? Only who is playing in this performance... the CD calls them the Academy of Ancient Music Chamber Ensemble but the individuals are in fact…

Cello – Timothy Mason

Viola – Jan Schlapp

Violin – Monica Huggett

And the Oboe – Stephen Hammer

Here is the second section of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Oboe Quartet.

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That was…  

Cello – Timothy Mason

Viola – Jan Schlapp

Violin – Monica Huggett

And the Oboe – Stephen Hammer

With the second section of Mozart’s Oboe Quartet.

So one of the instruments I promised in this week’s episode of music featuring the woodwind family was the bassoon. In orchestral writing it’s dark and sometimes growling sound is a really important element but in terms of music where it features as a soloist it does not get anywhere near the attention that the oboe, flute or clarinet do. Unless you are thinking of the Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi. Of the 39 Bassoon concertos he wrote 37 have survived. And this is No. 12 from the early 1720s. Here are bassoonist Sergio Azzolini; conductor Diego Cantalupi: and the group L'Aura Soave Cremona. The opening three minutes of Vivaldi’s bassoon concerto no. 12

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That was bassoonist Sergio Azzolini; conductor Diego Cantalupi: and the group L'Aura Soave Cremona performing the opening of Antonio Vivaldi’s bassoon concerto no. 12

So I played you some oboe music from the eighteenth century. Here is some from the 20^th century which I wish was performed more often. It is Carl Vine’s Oboe Concerto from 1996. In a review on ClassicsToday.com American critic Victor Carr Jnr wrote a nice summary… Australian composer Carl Vine writes in a highly approachable idiom that incorporates tonality and melody, although his harmonic style is decidedly 20th century. The piece as a whole brims with buoyant energy and features a rhythmically challenging solo part, which oboist Diana Doherty handles with confident virtuosity.

Here is the final section. It is about 6 minutes long and this recording is of the TSO conducted by Ola Rudner featuring the soloist Diana Doherty. Carl Vine’s Oboe Concerto.

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That was the TSO conducted by Ola Rudner featuring the soloist Diana Doherty with the final section of Carl Vine’s Oboe Concerto.

To finish this episode devoted to woodwinds here is an instance where a composer grouped a whole collection of woodwind instruments together. It is written for pairs of oboes, clarinets, basset horns (which are a larger and deeper sounding version of clarinet) and bassoons, along with four horns and a double bass. It is the Serenade No 10 by Mozart from probably 1781. Serenades were typically lighter music almost intended to be played in the background. Frequently they were performed outside in the evening. It’s hard to imagine Mozart writing something intended to be ‘background music’ but composing is a business so you never know. The whole piece is 50 minutes long and to distinguish it from his other Serenades it was at some point given the additional title ‘Gran Partita’ which is one of those annoying and almost meaningless terms that turn up in classical music. Some people translate it as ‘big wind symphony’ which I’ll use today because you don’t need to hear me get into the weeds this early in our relationship.his is the 4^th section. It is performed by Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Serenade No. 10.

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That was  the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra performing the 4^th section of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Serenade No. 10.

My name is Peter Cudlipp and you have been listening to the ‘Classical for Everyone’ Podcast. If you would like to listen to past episodes or get details of the music I’ve played please head to the website classicalforeveryone.net. There you will also find some mini-episodes that address some of what I want to call the vexing questions for a listener new to Classical Music like… ‘Are conductors actually important?’; ‘Why does the word ‘sonata’ keep turning up?’ and ‘Why is almost everything in Italian?’.

I hope you have enjoyed this episode of ‘Classical For Everyone’. If you want to make sure you don’t miss the shows as they are released then please Subscribe or Follow wherever you get your podcasts. That would also mean the search algorithms will smile more benignly on the show and it might reach a few more people. For that I would be very grateful. And if you want to get in touch then you can email… info@classicalforeveryone.net. Thanks for your time and I look forward to playing you some more incredible music on the next ‘Classical For Everyone’.

This podcast is made with Audacity Software for editing, Wikipedia for Research, Claude for Artificial Intelligence and Apple, Sennheiser, Sony, Rode and Logitech for hardware… The music played is licensed through AMCOS / APRA. Classical For Everyone is a production of Mending Wall Studios and began life on Radio 2BBB in Bellingen NSW, Australia thanks to the late, great Mr Jeffrey Sanders. The producers do not receive any gifts or support of any kind from any organisation or individual mentioned in the show. But, never say never.

And if you have listened to the credits… here is a little bonus for you… another few minutes of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra playing Mozart’s Serenade No. 10.