If you’ve ever attended a live symphony concert, you’re familiar with the routine: before anyone starts playing, before the conductor even steps on stage, the principal oboist sounds an “A” — and the other musicians tune their instruments to that pitch.
On today’s date in 1975, a few people in the audience at Carnegie Hall might have been surprised to hear this familiar ritual segue directly into the opening of John Corigliano’s new Oboe Concerto, which was receiving its premiere performance by oboist Burt Lucarelli and the American Symphony orchestra.
The first movement of Corigliano’s Concerto is titled Tuning Game, followed by a Song-Scherzo, Aria and a final Dance. This form, Corigliano said, arose “from the different aspects of the oboe … the coloratura qualities of the oboe are emphasized in the Aria movement, for example, but the whole Concerto is highly theatrical, virtuoso music for both soloist and orchestra.”
Theatrical is right! The final dance movement was inspired by the sound of the rhaita, or Morrocan oboe. According to Corigliano: “I was fascinated by the rhaita’s sound, heady and forceful ... but having an infectiously exciting quality. I first heard the instrument in Marrakech in 1966, serenading a cobra.”
John Corigliano (b. 1938): Oboe Concerto; Humbert Lucarelli, oboe; American Symphony; Kazuyoshi Akiyama, conductor; RCA/BMG 60395