About the Music
 

Please note that Ewan and Cerys' programme has changed slightly since these notes were written
 

Thea Musgrave: Dawn

The Scottish composer Thea Musgrave (b. 1928) is especially known for her operas, many of which feature historical figures as central characters. This inherent sense of musical drama also figures in her instrumental works, including the ones we’ll hear today. In such pieces, Musgrave employs what she calls the ‘dramatic-abstract’, whereby some sort of idea, often drawn from stories or the visual arts, is expressed through word-less music. Lasting around two minutes, Dawn (2012) is a wistful evocation of an eastern Mediterranean soundscape. A series of ascending figures and ornamented arabesques swirl together as morning light approaches.

C.P.E. Bach: Flute Sonata in A minor, arranged for oboe

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788), the second son of Johann Sebastian Bach, composed his Sonata for Solo Flute in 1747, when he was in the employ of King Frederick the Great of Prussia. He likely wrote the sonata for either the king, who was a very fine flautist, or his teacher, the eminent J. J. Quantz. The sonata is highly experimental not only for its scoring but also in how it is put together. Rather than a typical fast-slow-faster plan, Bach’s sonata displays a slow-fast-faster design, with each movement becoming increasingly quick-paced. The graceful interplay between distinct musical lines adds to the charm of this eighteenth-century gem.

T. C. Kelly: ‘The Mother’

The highly respected Irish composer, teacher and conductor Thomas Christopher (T.C.) Kelly (1917-1985) considered himself to be musically bilingual, having grown up with both Irish traditional music and the European concert repertory. In many ways, he fused these approaches in his own works, whether they were arrangements of traditional Irish tunes or original compositions that capture the essence of Irish melodies. In 1964, Kelly set ‘The Mother’ by the Irish poet Pádraig Pearse (1879-1916), who was one of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin. Pearse’s heartfelt lyrics present a serious view of motherhood coming from an adult perspective.

Musgrave: Niobe

Scored for oboe and electronic tape and lasting seven minutes, Niobe (1987) takes its inspiration from Greek mythology. Niobe boasted about her great number of children to Lebo, who only had two, Apollo and Artemis. Angered by Niobe’s hubris, Lebo ordered Apollo to kill all of Niobe’s sons and Artemis all of her daughters. The gods, seeing Niobe’s inconsolable grief, turned her into a rock, and she continued to weep. In Musgrave’s retelling, the oboe intones Niobe’s lament while the pre-recorded tape, made in the Chiens Interdits Studios in New York, provides an ethereal, at times otherworldly counterpoint.

Benjamin Britten: Six Metamorphoses after Ovid 

Given his importance as an opera composer, it should come as no surprise that Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) was fascinated with literature, including that of the Roman poet Ovid. But having a literary-inspired work for solo oboe first performed on the serene Thorpeness Meare with the audience and performer in row boats is exceptional. Ever since Janet Boughton gave the premiere of Six Metamorphoses after Ovid on 14 June 1951 as part of that year’s Aldeburgh Festival, its haunting beauty has captured the imaginations of oboists and audiences alike.

Each of Britten’s Metamorphoses is based on a legend in which some sort of transformation is at its centre. ‘Pan’ is marked ‘senza misura’, meaning ‘without measure’, an indication that Britten is giving the player a great deal of freedom in this bucolic utterance. Since the nymphs transform Syrinx into reeds so that she can avoid Pan’s unwelcome advances, the oboe, with its double reed, makes an ideal instrument for conveying this particular tale. The mercurial ‘Phaeton’ depicts the story of an arrogant young man who, when his father grants him one wish, drives the sun’s chariot across the sky. Total chaos results, which prompts Jupiter to shoot a thunderbolt that causes the chariot and its driver to crash into a river. ‘Niobe’ is imbued with tender reflections on the tragic results of bragging, while ‘Bacchus’ depicts a revel-filled uninhibited romp. In ‘Narcissus’, Britten creates an introspective dialogue between Narcissus and his reflection, with one part in the upper register of the oboe and the other in the lower. Finally, in ‘Arethusa’ the goddess Diana turns the title character into water so that she can be reunited with Alpheus, the river god who loves her. In Britten’s delicate setting, falling cascades suggest the tumbling water of a fountain and recurring series of trills that of ripples on an otherwise still pool.

J.S. Bach: Partita in A minor for solo flute, BWV1013, arranged for oboe

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) wrote only one work for solo flute, this collection of four dance evocations. As was typical practice in the early eighteenth century, the dances appear in pairs, the first slow and the second fast. The graceful Allemande that opens the work is complemented by a nimble Corrente, a running dance. Next comes a stately Sarabande, which is followed by a lively Bourrée angloise, or English bourrée, that brings to the work to a satisfying close.

Herbert Hughes: ‘Oh Men from the Fields’

Herbert Hughes (1882-1937), whose version of ‘Oh Men from the Fields’ we’ll hear today, remarked that Irish folk music had ‘more variety of mood’ than that of any other European country. One of the most important figures in the Irish folk song movement of the early twentieth century, Hughes collected hundreds of melodies, many of which he arranged and published in collections, most notably the four volumes of Irish Country Songs.

Alyssa Morris: from Collision Etudes

American composer and oboist Alyssa Morris (b. 1984) created her set of six Collision Etudes for solo oboe in 2017, each based on a painting by an American woman artist. This afternoon, we’ll hear two of the etudes—the fifth, ‘Autumn Leaves – Georgia O’Keefe’, and the sixth, ‘My World is Not Flat – Margarete Bagshaw’. ‘Autumn Leaves’, a musical impression of one of O’Keefe’s massive canvases showing close-ups of foliage, includes references to the jazz standard ‘Autumn Leaves’. Snippets of legendary interpretations by the likes of Miles Davis, Chet Baker and John Coltrane intersect with Morris’s own musical material. ‘My World is Not Flat’ is inspired by the work of Native American modernist painter Margarete Bagshaw, an artist known for her layered technique. Morris’s etude juxtaposes multiphonic sounds with a Native American dance to create a most intriguing dialogue. In both studies, the collisions are not syntheses or fusions, but rather dynamic conversations between different musical viewpoints.

Vaughan Williams: Ten Blake Songs

Whereas Britten’s Six Metamorphoses had its first performance outdoors, Ralph Vaughan Williams’s (1872-1958) Ten Blake Songs originated as film music. Scored for tenor or soprano and oboe, Vaughan Williams composed the songs for The Vision of William Blake, a 29-minute short film written and directed by Guy Brenton. Only eight of the songs appeared in the film (numbers 2 and 3 were left out). The cycle was first performed for a BBC radio broadcast with tenor Wilfred Brown and oboist Janet Craxton on 8 November 1958, just two days before the film had its world premiere in London.

Considering the songs’ purpose, Vaughan Williams chose to set words by the English poet, artist and visionary William Blake (1757-1827), namely poems from Songs of Innocence and Experience for the first nine and one from Several Questions Answered for the tenth. While hints of the lush, pastoral idiom so closely associated with Vaughan Williams are present, this cycle lies more in the world of the musically abstract and austere. Three of the songs (nos. 4, 6 and 9) are for voice alone, which adds to their sense of starkness. In the seven that do feature the oboe, Vaughan Williams creates a variety of interplay between the two parts. Sometimes the voice and the oboe complement one another, even sharing musical material, while at other times, their musical content is vastly different. Similarly, some songs are on religious themes, while others are more grounded in earthly matters. The languid intensity of the songs marked ‘Experience’ contrasts with the gentleness, serenity and sometimes dance-like nature of those marked ‘Innocence’.

Anne Cawrse: ‘Calisto’ from Carmen Perpetuum 

Australian composer Anne Cawrse (b. 1981) created her response to Britten’s Six Metamorphoses in Carmen Perpetuum (Endless Song). This afternoon we’ll hear the fourth image from Cawrse’s set, ‘Calisto’. Cawrse, following Britten’s idea of providing a short summary of each persona, describes Calisto as someone ‘who is deceived and defiled by Jove, shamed by Diana, and further punished and made mute by Juno, before finally finding solace in the stars’. A sense of reflective melancholy pervades the short character study, which ends with Calisto and her son being transformed into the constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor so that they can live together for eternity. Oboist Celia Craig, to whom the work is dedicated, commissioned and first performed the complete set on 19 August 2023.

Jeffrey Agrell: Blues for DD

When Diana Doherty, former principal oboist of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, heard that her former Lucerne colleague, the horn player Jeffrey Agrell (b. 1948), was writing jazz-inspired pieces for classical wind players, she asked (or, in her own words, ‘begged’) him to create one for her. The result was Blues for DD, a virtuosic tour-de-force that starts off slowly and morphs into a lively escapade. Blues for DD offers a stunning combination of swing, Latin and bebop alongside modernistic flairs, most notably pitch-bending, where a note’s tuning is warped. Considering Ewan Millar’s dual musical careers as classical oboist and jazz pianist, his interpretation of this spectacular work makes a fitting conclusion to a splendid musical afternoon.

-Notes by William Everett

About the Performers

This past July, when oboist Ewan Millar won the first prize and gold medal at the prestigious Royal Over-Seas League Music Competition, his impressive list of accolades grew even larger. In 2020, he secured top place in the woodwind final of the BBC Young Musician competition and recently has been selected as an artist on both the Tillett Debut Scheme and the Countess of Munster Recital Scheme. In addition to his solo career, Ewan has performed as principal oboe with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Aurora Orchestra, the Britten Sinfonia and the London Concertante. A graduate of St. Hilda’s College, Oxford, he earned a postgraduate degree at the Royal Academy of Music, where he was awarded the Bicentennial Prize and the Janet Craxton Memorial Prize. Ewan is also a jazz pianist, gigging regularly in bars and restaurants around Oxford and London. He is a Howarth Artist and plays a Howarth XM oboe.

Award-winning Irish soprano Cerys MacAllister graduated with first class honours from the Royal Academy of Music, where she studied with Mary Brennan and Dearbhla Collins. She is currently pursuing her masters degree at the same institution under Yvonne Howard and Jonathan Papp.