By PHK
It occurred to me last week that I had written nothing about music, drama or anything else that went beyond posts relating to the mind deadening, mostly depressing political morass of the past several months. The closest I came to an uplifting post since mid-September was on November 29 about the Pope’s visit to Turkey.
Maybe it’s because I’m still recuperating from a foot operation in early October and haven’t been as active as usual – or maybe it’s because I became so engrossed in the neverending twists, turns and squirms by our Kafkaesque political leadership since I returned from a trip to Greece and Turkey in late September that my brain has been riveted on the politically absurd as opposed to venturing into the far more pleasurable artistically sublime. Or maybe it’s simply because I’m still identifying photos from that trip and haven’t figured out how to make the best use of them as well as spending much of the time I reserve for the arts to practicing/attempting to play the oboe.
Who knows – I don’t, but John Brown’s recent article on the cultural dimensions, or actually paucity thereof, in America's public diplomacy which I mentioned briefly in my review of the book America’s Dialogue with the World drew me back to the importance of art in our lives and the world. By art, I don’t mean only painting, sculpture or drawing but enjoyment of the beauty and richness of the entire world of the arts as opposed to the all too often skuzzy universe of politics in which we are, or at least I am, often sunk.
Favorites on this Night before Christmas
So I thought I would change the theme today in keeping with the mood of the holidays and offer here several of my favorites on the Night before Christmas.
To begin, I asked Elaine Heltman, the Santa Fe Symphony’s principal oboist and my incredibly patient oboe teacher, for recommendations of works for oboe or pieces featuring the oboe that are performed during the holiday season. Since the oboe is not mercifully or normally a part of those over-played all too familiar Christmas carols, jingles, country rock or pop tunes that we are subjected to endlessly and especially in their ever familiar, stale Musak renditions, this list is not exactly what you, or anyone else I’ll venture, will find among the top 100 or probably even the top 1,000 in the commercial Christmas music vendors’ repertoire.
Heltman referred me to a number of Bach cantatas and suites that feature or include oboe, English horn or oboe d’amore as well as Antonio Vivaldi’s “Gloria” and other compositions from Europe's 1600-1750 baroque period that remain seasonal favorites. Bach will have to wait until next year and so will the “Gloria,” but I thought I’d begin with a few of my baroque oboe favorites that build on and reinforce her suggestions. (Please feel free to offer suggestions of your own if you’d like – and explain why.)
These are Antonio Vivaldi’s Oboe Concerto in D Minor, RV 454, his Oboe Concerto in C Major, RV 452 and his Oboe Concerto in C Major, RV450; Marcello’s Oboe Concerto in C Minor (don’t ask me which of the two Marcellos actually wrote the composition), and Domenico Cimarosa’s Oboe Concerto (arranged by Arthur Benjamin).
My favorites list then, however, veers abruptly away from the twists and turns of the baroque. Namely, to the nineteen and twentieth centuries and in the direction of Pyotr IlyichTchaikovsky’s (1840-1893) Symphony No. 1, Opus 13 in G Minor “Winter Daydreams” and Joaquin Rodrigo’s (1902-1999) “Concerto de Aranjuez” for guitar and orchestra.
Tchaikovsky’s “Winter Daydreams,” written early in his career, took 22 years to be performed in its present form whereas Rodrigo’s “Concerto de Aranjuez” became an overnight success when it was first played in 1940 taking the then impoverished and blind Rodrigo and his Turkish-born pianist wife Victoria Kamhi to financial security for the rest of their lengthy lives.
I realize combining Italian Baroque with Russia’s Tchaikovsky and Spain’s Rodrigo must seem like mixing 
oranges, fir trees and pomegranates. Yet a steady diet of any one thing, lends - in my book - to monotony. Much as I like Vivaldi and his contemporaries and am in awe of Bach, I like other composers and periods just as well.
So why did I add these two orchestral pieces by Tchaikovsky and Rodrigo to my holiday favorites list this year? Maybe the answer is simply because I like them. Both works are sonorous, largely melodic, and rhythmical. I guess I also chose them, mostly, because both composers are colorists. As such, their palettes were sprinkled liberally with the distinctive, penetrating, often soulful, sound of the oboe and its quirkier deeper-throated cousin, the English horn.
“Winter Daydreams’” second movement, “Adagio cantabile ma non tanto” contains a beautiful oboe solo. This melody then plays hopscotch throughout the orchestra. Rodrigo’s “Adagio,” in contrast, features throughout a lovely duet between the English horn and the classical guitar.
Both symphonic compositions were written by composers near the beginning of their careers so perhaps it’s their youthful exuberance, willingness to experiment and the highs and lows of their emotions that had yet to be rounded, softened, jaded or compromised by aging that attract me to them. And both fashioned their symphonic whole around melodies and rhythms of their respective and distinctively Russian and Spanish cultures rooted in peasant traditions. In their different ways, both Tchaikovsky and Rodrigo blend the modern tonalities of Western Europe with the haunting underlying atonal (to Western ears) sounds and incredibly complex rhythms that have seeped into and transformed parts of Western composition from different parts of the Byzantine and Islamic worlds over the centuries.
With thanks to the Santa Fe Symphony for introducing me to Tchaikovsky's Winter Daydreams, Elaine Heltman for her suggestions on oboe, English horn and oboe d'amore compositions for the holidays and guitarist Jeremy Mayne for telling me about Rodrigo's Concerto d'Aranjuez.
All of the works mentioned above are available on CD. Perhaps some can be downloaded directly.
So I wish you good listening and a very happy holiday season!
Photos credits - top to bottom: Christmas amaryllis, 2006 by PHKushlis; Sandias in the snow, 2006 by PHKushlis; Klin, Tchaikovsky's summer home outside Moscow, 1979 by WJKushlis; Pomegranate tree, Cirince, Turkey 2006 by PHKushlis.