The Sheffield Chamber Music Festival returned digitally with a mixture of live-streamed and pre-recorded concerts (including some fascinating 360º videos), all still available for free on demand until the end of May. For their live Friday lunchtime slot, we were treated to three 20th-century English composers’ contributions to the oboe chamber repertoire, all works written for, or dedicated to, Léon Goossens.
Goossens gave the first performance in 1930 of York Bowen’s Oboe Sonata, typical of his late-Romantic style. The opening movement flows from its graceful opening, and immediately Adrian Wilson’s bright yet supple tones were matched by warmth from Tim Horton on the piano. There are darker harmonic exchanges and wilder surges in the development section, and Wilson and Horton luxuriated in the ebb and flow of this Debussian rhapsody. The more meditative slow movement moves from Debussy into Fauré territory, with sliding, dark harmonies. Wilson’s control in the long phrases was highly impressive, and delicately placed rising scale runs led to a calmly resigned conclusion. In the finale’s playful romp, there was tight rapid articulation from Wilson, and jaunty lightness on display from both players.
The other two works here replaced piano with string quartet, and Finzi’s single movement Interlude shifted us into a more melancholic, wistful mood. The Ensemble 360 strings gave the gentle opening an airy tone, slowly warming as the rhythm moved into an unsettled lilt. When the oboe joined, almost two minutes in, Wilson’s wailing cadenza-like passage was answered with more impassioned playing from the strings. Finzi makes great use of different string textures here, with gently strummed cello chords making us think we are on safer ground, subverted by dark harmonies in the inner parts. Following an impressive oboe cadenza, the opening airy string tone returned, with first violin (Benjamin Nabarro) rising to a high finish with light control on a long harmonic. Aside from the final throbbed chords not being totally together, this was a warm yet suitably introspective performance overall.
Bax’s Oboe Quintet completed proceedings, the earliest work, dating from 1922, the year of his First Symphony. Bax’s sensibility for Irish music is not just evident in finale’s jig, but also in the melodic material of the first two movements. Following the opening string chords, the oboe rises birdlike, and it dominates melodically, occasionally exchanging material with the first violin. The strings provide an incredible range of textures and colours, with tremolo first violin right on the bridge, throbbingly urgent pizzicatos, and glassy mutes for the opening material’s return at the end, with close attention to the dynamics here allowing Wilson’s melody to rise above in the movement’s calm finish. The strings got more of a go at the tunes in the serene slow movement, with Nabarro passing the opening melody to Rachel Roberts (viola), who really allowed the wistful tune to sing out of the texture. Wilson’s oboe provided more of a plaintive commentary on proceedings, with improvisatory cries becoming increasingly desperate, before the slow calm of the final cadence’s rising harmonies. This was all put to one side by the twanging pizzicato clatter that opens the finale, with the oboe launching off into the lively jig. The rattling strings might have been a little rough around the edges in places here, but the spirit was infectious, with Wilson keeping them on the straight and narrow of the jig with precise articulation. Again, following the brief oboe solo at the end, the gallop to the finish was slightly imprecise, but the enthusiasm of the flourish brought the programme to a lively conclusion.
This performance was reviewed from Music in the Round's video stream
