Concerto for Oboe and Small Orchestra in D major
Richard Strauss
D uring the early years of his career, Richard
Strauss complained that he couldn’t come
up with ideas unless spurred by some poetic or
dramatic scenario. But in the 1940s, as he en-
tered his 80s, he seems to have suddenly real-
ized that this was not the case; his final years
gave rise to several entirely abstract pieces.
These included a pair of meaty works for wind
ensemble, Metamorphosen for Twenty-Three
Solo Strings, and three concerted works: the
Horn Concerto No. 2, Duett-Concertino for Clar-
inet and Bassoon, and the Oboe Concerto. These
are all lushly beautiful pieces that suggest a
late-in-life purification of Strauss’s writing.
That the Oboe Concerto should require a rel-
atively small accompanying ensemble rather
than the vast orchestras Strauss had called for
in his tone poems is entirely characteristic of
his propensities in this period. Possibly it was a
musical choice not entirely unrelated to practi-
cal realities, since Germany was feeling its belt
tightened during and after World War II, and
cultural presentations were considerably less
lavish than they once had been.
Strauss’s activities during the Nazi era are
open to debate — he was not a party member,
though he proved accommodating on occasion
— but he put all that to rest as much as possible
when the war ended. Among the American sol-
diers stationed in occupied Bavaria after the
war was Alfred Mann, who would go on to be-
come a noted musicologist. Mann paid a call at
Strauss’s villa in Garmisch and the two culti-
vated something of a friendship. On one visit
Mann brought along a colleague, John de Lan-
cie, who had by then served as principal oboist
of the Pittsburgh Symphony under Fritz Reiner
and who would go on to become the principal
oboist of The Philadelphia Orchestra, director
of the Curtis Institute of Music, and dean of the
New World School of the Arts in Miami. De Lan-
cie (who lived until 2002) later recounted:
I asked him if, in view of the numerous beau-
tiful, lyric solos for oboe in almost all his
works, he had ever considered writing a con-
certo of oboe. He answered “No,” and there
was no more conversation on the subject. He
later told a fellow musician friend of mine
(Alfred Mann …) that the idea had taken root
as a result of that remark. He subsequently,
in numerous interviews and letters, spoke of
this concerto in reference to my visits with
him, and I have a letter from him inviting me
to the first performance in Zurich.
Strauss inscribed at the top of his autograph
“Oboe Concerto 1945 / suggested by an Ameri-
can soldier / oboist from Chicago.” As de Lancie
IN SHORT
Born: June 11, 1864, in Munich, Bavaria
(Germany)
Died: September 8, 1949, in Garmisch
Work composed: 1945, completed on
October 25 of that year; ending revised in 1948
World premiere: February 26, 1946, in Zurich,
Switzerland, by the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra,
Volkmar Andreae, conductor, Marcel Saillet,
soloist
New York Philharmonic premiere: May 6,
1982, Zubin Mehta, conductor, Joseph Robinson,
soloist
Most recent New York Philharmonic
performance: February 18, 2008, at the Hong
Kong Cultural Center, Xian Zhang, conductor,
Liang Wang, soloist
Estimated duration: ca. 26 minutes
APRIL 2016 | 27
Listen for … a Windy Opening
Oboists “tend to go pale when you say the words
‘Strauss Concerto,’ ” wrote Michael Steinberg, a past
New York Philharmonic program annotator, in The
Concerto: A Listener’s Guide. The response has to do
with the opening,
where, after two twitches from the cellos, the oboe
has a solo of 57 measures in a fairly leisurely tempo
and with not so much as a single sixteenth-rest.
Strauss may have been influenced by experiments
with his Alpine Symphony, for which he suggested
use of the aerophor, a device patented in 1912 that
used a foot-operated bellows to send air to a tube
discreetly placed in a corner of the mouth to assist
wind players with sustained chords. However, Stein-
berg added that musicians today are adept at circu-
lar breathing for extended passages:
Having conquered the technical difficulty of end-
less breath supply, the oboist finds a melodic line
that is sinuous and lovely, thoroughly vocal in
manner; the oboe seems to be a kind of second
donna, somewhere between serious or semi-
serious heroine and soubrette.
(Principal Oboe Liang Wang demonstrates the circu-
lar breathing technique in a video on the New York
Philharmonic’s YouTube channel.)
— The Editors
was actually a native of Berkeley, California,
this seems to be nothing more than a slip of ge-
ography. De Lancie later received a letter from
his brother with a clipping from an armed
forces newspaper, reporting:
The world will get a new oboe concerto from
the pen of the famous Richard Strauss, 81-
year-old composer, because an American
soldier asked the master to write him a few
bars of music for the oboe.
In October 1945, shortly after the Oboe Con-
certo was completed, Strauss and his wife left
Garmisch to stay in Switzerland. Food and fuel
were in short supply, and the currency collapse
in Germany was exacerbated by frozen royalty
accounts from Strauss’s publishers. The com-
poser’s residence near Zurich at the time ac-
counts for the fact that this concerto was
premiered there.
Instrumentation: two flutes, English horn,
two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, and
strings, in addition to the solo oboe.
An earlier version of this note appeared in the
programs of The Juilliard School and is used with
permission. ©James M. Keller

The American Premiere

After Strauss’s Oboe Concerto was premiered in Europe, John de Lancie re-
ceived a letter from the publisher Boosey & Hawkes saying that Strauss wished
to offer him the first American performance. But there was a problem. In 1946
de Lancie had joined The Philadelphia Orchestra and his junior status pre-
cluded his solo performance of the work. The American premiere was instead
played by Mitchell Miller (later more widely known as Mitch, leader of the Sing
Along with Mitch television program of the 1960s) and the Columbia Concert
Orchestra, Daniel Saidenberg conducting, in a 1948 radio broadcast. De Lan-
cie didn’t have an opportunity to perform Strauss’s Concerto until 1964 be-
cause Eugene Ormandy, The Philadelphia Orchestra’s music director, did not
care for the piece; and after that he had to wait until 1987 for a second oppor-
tunity, when he recorded it with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.

John de Lancie

28 | NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC