Nicholas Daniel
On Monday 18 October oboist Nicholas Daniel will give the London premiere of James MacMillan’s new oboe concerto at Queen Elizabeth Hall. Here Nicholas Daniel gives a personal view of the piece and how it was developed.
‘Sometimes important new pieces emerge after a long ‘courtship’ with a composer, sometimes they come out of the blue. With the James MacMillan Oboe Concerto it has been born out of a long, happy and fruitful working relationship and friendship, between James and myself and between James and the Britten Sinfonia. It is quite clear from his writing that in this time he has come to understand my playing profoundly both as conductor and composer, and, very importantly for the new piece, he understands the important relationship between me and my colleagues in the Britten Sinfonia. This, after all, is the orchestra I am a founder member of, who I adore more than any other, and keep a watchful eye on at all times, and for whom, uniquely, my wind ensemble, Haffner Winds, is the wind section.
Luckily for us the Concerto has come at a time when he seems to have found terrific ease and confidence, and even fun, in his music. One instruction in the music is ‘laughing’, for instance, over a cascade of trilled notes!
I was lucky enough to perform The World’s Ransoming, part of his massive and impressive Easter work Triune, for Cor Anglais and large orchestra, with Jimmy in my favourite Polish city, Wroclaw, 2 years ago. It was in one of the astounding churches on an island in the city centre – a very special calm and serenity descends on one there. At one moment in the piece the Cor Anglais enters on a high D# adorned with what sounds like a glitter of starlight in the percussion and I just remember looking up at Jimmy at that point and being so inspired to see the music so visible in his face that the high D# just floated out exactly as I wanted it to. Its a great gift he has to make it so easy to understand his music just by his manner and physical expression, as well as by what he says.
On that visit to Poland we discussed some general points about the Concerto, and I believe I may have made the slight mistake of asking him not to limit in any way what he wanted to write! I say mistake but I don’t mean it, of course, but the piece is really quite hard! Its arguably the most technical concerto in an oboistic sense that has been written since Elliot Carter’s. In fact I have found it harder to learn than the Carter.
When I got the music a short while ago it looked to me rather like Nielsen’s Clarinet Concerto in terms of the oboe writing, by which I mean flowingly virtuosic and needing an effortlessness to the technique. It also has a very exciting soloistic and supportive role for the wind, brass and timps inside the orchestra. There is no operatic aspect of this in terms of peripatitetic requirements, but the calling across the orchestra of various groups of instruments will be a stand out feature of the work, as is palindromic writing. The slow movement is a total re-write of a solo oboe piece Jimmy wrote after the 9/11 atrocity in America, In Angustiis ii. The original piece is desolate, lost, post-nuclear, horrifying, but the concerto to me seems to have more companionship in it and more hope, and maybe more beauty.
In a way it’s hard to write about it because I haven’t heard it all yet and haven’t put it with the audience, and that changes everything. I’m finishing this little insight for you on the train on the way to the first rehearsal, and I am so excited and nervous, and honoured to have such a fine, confident piece written for me.’
To book tickets for Monday’s performance, which also features Beethoven’s Symphony No.2 and Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony, click here.
James MacMillan’s Oboe Concerto is co-commissioned by Britten Sinfonia and Birmingham Town Hall, and is also being performed in Brimingham, Cambridge and Norwich.
Filed under: Classical season 10-11, Contemporary Classical, Get to know..., Misc, Queen Elizabeth Hall Tagged: | Britten Sinfonia, Classical, classical music, concerto, James MacMillan, Nicholas Daniel, oboe, oboe concerto, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre
