Vincenzo Bellini: Oboe Concerto, Es dur, Francesco Quaranta (oboe)

Vincenzo Bellini: Oboe Concerto Es-dur, Francesco Quaranta – oboe, Konzertensemble Salzburg, Alberto Veronesi (conductor) 1.Maestoso e deciso --- 2.Larghetto. Allegro polonese. Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini (3 November 1801 – 23 September 1835) was an Italian opera composer, who was known for his long-flowing melodic lines for which he was named "the Swan of Catania". Born in Catania, at the time part of the Kingdom of Sicily, the eldest of seven children in the family, he became a child prodigy within a highly musical family. The focus of his study (Conservatorio di San Sebastiano) was on the masters of the Neapolitan school and the orchestral works of Haydn and Mozart, with the emphasis put upon the Italian classical era composers such as Pergolesi and Paisiello, rather than the "modern-day" approaches of composers such as Rossini. Bellini’s fame was closely bound up with the bel canto style of the great singers of his day. He was not a reformer, but he strove for clarity, elegance of form and melody, and a close union of words and music. Yet with perseverance he corrected some of the grosser abuses of opera then current. While he subordinated the orchestra accompaniment to the singers and placed upon their voices the responsibility for dramatic expression, his harmony was more enterprising than that of his contemporary Gaetano Donizetti, and his handling of the orchestra in introductions and interludes was far from perfunctory. It is, however, for the individual charm and elegance of his luminous vocal melody that Bellini is remembered. „The oboe concerto of the short-lived Vincenzo Bellini is a youthful composition, one of the many instrumental compositions written before 1825, that is, before he found his maturity as one of the most original composers of Italian bel canto opera. The concerto has a rather spotted history. In 1869 the manuscript found its way into the possession of the library of San Pietro a Majella monastery in Naples. Its publication, as a facsimile, did not occur until 1941, and then in 1961 Ricordi brought out an unscholarly edition by Terenzio Gargiulo in which the orchestral wind parts were omitted, new passages were composed and other "corrections" to "the infelicities of the young master" were made. It wasn't until 1969 that the publisher Leuckart published an unadulterated modern edition. This two-movement work has now entered the oboist's repertoire as one of the most melodic and attractive of works from the Romantic period.”(by Lyle Chan)