Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Richard Strauss
Oboe Concertos

Crystalline, airy, the light.

You float around, cradled, in bucolic, dreamy atmospheres. July sunsets, the lapping of memories in the heart. You listen to these two concerts, clear, serene. Mozart, Strauss, and the oboe.

Rough, rustic instrument, the oboe. A shepherd's instrument, a Christmas instrument, an instrument of lullabies. But also an introverted, hidden, intimate, and nocturnal instrument. A soliloquy instrument. And an instrument that Bach had already valued to the extreme, in the solo virtuosity of his Cantatas and Passions. The oboe of Vivaldi's and Handel's concerts.

The oboe of this concerto in C major by Mozart. Serene, playful, and buffoonish. From the very "Allegro Aperto" that opens the concerto. Open, like a heart ready for life. An energizing and lulling theme, trills and semiquavers, quick exchanges between the soloist and the strings, displays of skill, bursts of clear sky, of musical azure, deep ultramarine blue of Mozartian lightness.

Romantic, intimate, crepuscular atmospheres in the "Romanza". Heart folded upon itself, rustles of petals, silken murmurs. Unrepeatable moments, the exhausted beauty of memory.

Lightness returns in the "Rondo". A closed theme, of few measures, self-affirmed, powerful and joyful. Dance-like and delicate, the oboe phrases, plays, clashes, challenges the orchestra with virtuosity and lightness. Dances of love.

But it is the Strauss Concerto that is truly the greatest page. A great page of Twentieth-Century music. More Mozartian than Mozart, the Strauss concerto is. It's the trust in man climbing the heart like an evergreen ivy. An ivy that builds the future after a war.

Composed at the end of the Second World War in a shattered Germany, Strauss's Concerto is catharsis, overcoming. The "Allegro Moderato" resumes lulling phrases, a celestial D major key, almost sapphire. Virtuosic fluctuations in the soloist’s breaths, bold and erotic chromaticisms, until the explosion of an orchestral "Tutti" that is serenity, distilled beauty, transcendence. A Mozartian theme, the reprises of the horns, the detached notes of the cellos.

A slow movement, the "Andante", in B flat. Tremblingly heartfelt, dark and sweet like cognac, a movement that freezes in an extraordinarily complex cadenza. Sweet and chromatic, buffoonish at times, exchanges and retorts between plucked strings that emphasize single notes. Harsh and sure.

The buffoonish "Vivace", to close. Bouncing, musical quicksilver. The dance, again. A childish, innocent dance, sullen at times. An ending that bursts against the barriers of music to cascade the freshness and light of its message.

For once, Schoenberg is wrong. "Art is not art if it is for everyone." It's not true. This music is beyond everything and embraces everyone. It is serenity, brotherhood. And beauty. Profound.