In review--Solo Oboe
Céline Moinet J.S. Bach, Berio, Britten Oboe Harmonia Mundi The oboe has always fascinated me. The instrument’s timbre falls somewhere between a cornet, English horn, and flute--so mysterious and alternately melancholy. If you asked me to single out the sound of the oboe in an orchestra, there’s a good chance that I’ll mistake the oboe for an English horn. On Céline Moinet’s recording Oboe , the musician explores diverse territory ranging from the baroque architecture of J.S. Bach and then skipping ahead several hundred years to modern composers Elliott Carter, Luciano Berio and Benjamin Britten. By bringing compositions by those composers, we might end up thinking that J.S. Bach was ahead of his time as far as polyphonies played on a single instrument. However, the Bach pieces that Moinet chose for this recording, (both father and son, CPE Bach's work), were originally composed for transverse flute. Still that doesn’t stop Moinet’s oboe from resembling a...