Do you have any advice for aspiring oboists?
The thing is that oboists, flautists, violinists — all of us — we understand our instruments well; we know everything about them. Whenever anyone plays, you gauge how good an oboist is in a certain instrumental way. Only the person who plays your instrument can do that. Learning to play an instrument in the refined, expressive way to win a position in any of these big orchestras or some competition is very hard. You have to be at a certain technical level even to get in, but the person who wins usually can give something to the audition committee or the audience. This is not instrumental, it’s musical, but this advice can be taken to an extreme. Of course, you need to possess a very high technical ability. If you’re dealing with auditions, everyone is going to be a great player with impeccable technique. So how do you choose between them? In the case of the oboe, we have an instrument that is instead a complex instrument. We have notes that are bright and dark. In the oboe world, if you’re able to learn how to make the bright note darker, that’s an impressive thing. But the thing is, I say to students, “So let’s give an example for what kind of a compliment you want to receive after you play. Do you want to be told, your B natural sounded so dark, and your A was so not bright at all?” That’s ridiculous; that would not happen. I want to be told my playing is beautiful and musical, and expressive. Many of us oboists, instrumentals, and wind players get stuck in this instrumentalism, the “oboism” of it all. We try to go with quality, and sometimes it’s a rut because it can come at the expense of expression. It’s not a technical art but an expressive art. When you say, “Stop worrying about the particular demands of the instrument; let’s make some magic and transform the audience.” That’s easier and much more fun to do and gets the best results. Nobody in the audience has any interest in the technical aspects of the instrument. The audience wants magic and something unique.
Website: oboesolo.com
