Oboe

Although the oboe traces its heritage to many countries, in the United States, the instrument has a French ancestry. Most of the instruments themselves are made in France, and the impact of French teachers through the early years of this century has produced players whose accent is resoundingly French. It was only natural that Richard Woodhams would play French works when he and pianist Kyoko Takeuti appeared in recital last night at the Curtis Institute of Music. It was natural that he would play them with many French values intact, but enhanced by the healthy, somewhat extroverted manner that marks his playing.

The small labels have taken on the large responsibility of preserving works by regional composers. These composers often are played by musicians known in their cities but lacking international reputations. A case in point is the Crystal Records collection of music for oboe played by Peter Christ (CD 32). Besides being a busy Los Angeles player and teacher, Christ also was the founder of the label and the producer for 100 of its discs. This recording makes an apt memorial for Christ, who died last year of cancer.

The Hancock Chamber Players made a compelling case for the unusual on Saturday. The ensemble, which played in an intimate room at Abington Friends Meeting in Jenkintown, consists of oboist Lisa Kozenko, hornist Martin Webster and pianist Dana Burnett. This improbable combination doesn't enjoy a wide repertory. The trio, then, didn't program a performance as much as it cooked up one. What the musicians served the audience proved successful in every sense: three tasteful and skillfully crafted transcriptions for horn, oboe and piano; two gems, rescued from obscurity, for solo instruments and piano; and one group of three solo piano pieces by Debussy.

During the 15 seasons that he has been the Philadelphia Orchestra's principal oboist, Richard Woodhams has given audiences at the Academy of Music a pleasant survey of the solo literature written for his instrument. Standing in front of his orchestral colleagues, he has played the "Handel, the Haydn, the Bellini, the Bach Double, the Vaughan-Williams, the Vivaldi, the Strauss, the Mozart" - he ticks them off, adding that, although he enjoys the solo assignments, the finest solo playing scored for his instrument is likely to be found within the orchestral literature.

Animal lovers have their endangered species. Now music lovers have their endangered instruments. The list, as compiled by the people at the Community Music School of Collegeville, consists of the oboe, French horn, tuba, bassoon, double bass and organ. School founder Edwina French said the low number of musicians who play these instruments is a problem for schools and community orchestras across the country. "They are unpopular for various reasons," she said. "It's a problem for school districts that don't have a full ensemble.

John de Lancie, 80, the virtuoso oboist who headed the Curtis Institute of Music and who helped create a new repertoire for his instrument, died Friday of leukemia in Walnut Creek, Calif. Mr. de Lancie, who joined the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1946 and served as principal from 1954-77, was widely considered one of the great oboists of his time. His playing was a suave combination of refinement and strongly pronounced colors. "You could immediately recognize it was the Philadelphia Orchestra from his oboe playing," said Richard Woodhams, the current principal oboist of the orchestra and a de Lancie prot?g?.

Bach was such a sequoia, he overshadowed his contemporaries working in German courts. When Musica Antiqua Koeln played Sunday in the Bach Festival, it brought music by some of those others, making a strong case for Johann David Heinichen. The center of the single-performance program, at the Church of the Holy Trinity, was given to Bach - two secular cantatas that used all the resources of this tightly knit ensemble. But the context was supplied by Heinichen and Johann Friedrich Fasch.

The Hancock Chamber Players Saturday made a compelling case for the unusual. The Hancock, which played in an intimate room at Abington Friends Meeting in Jenkintown, consists of oboist Lisa Kozenko, hornist Martin Webster, and pianist Dana Burnett. This improbable combination doesn't enjoy a wide repertory of pieces. And compositions for French horn and piano and for oboe and piano are also meager. The Hancock, then, didn't program a performance as much as it cooked up one. What they served the audience proved successful in every sense.

Finger, Galuppi and Fasch? Who ever heard of them? And who else but Philomel would take the time and trouble to pull gems of the baroque by such composers as these out of mothballs? Philomel pushed the boundaries of its usual repertoire with their Saturday night concert at the Ethical Society - not because the composers were unusual, but because at least two of them inched past the end of the baroque and into the classical era. Baldassare Galuppi's Sonata in G for flute, oboe and continuo showed a composer uninterested in "intricate, contrapuntal relationships," as Bruce Bekker wrote in the program notes, but in "conversational interactions, exchanges based on melodies.

Alfred Genovese, 79, a native Philadelphian and oboist whose fine phrasing and generous playing helped elevate the performances of Boston Symphony Orchestra musicians for 21 years, died last Friday at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania of complications from cardiac arrest. Soft and sweet, expressive as a voice, the sounds that Mr. Genovese coaxed from his oboe lingered in the memories of audiences and musicians decades after the notes faded. His approach to playing was formed in part by Marcel Tabuteau, a legendary oboist who trained generations of the world's best players, including Mr. Genovese, his last student.

Alfred Genovese, 79, a native Philadelphian and oboist whose fine phrasing and generous playing helped elevate the performances of Boston Symphony Orchestra musicians for 21 years, died last Friday at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania of complications from cardiac arrest. Soft and sweet, expressive as a voice, the sounds that Mr. Genovese coaxed from his oboe lingered in the memories of audiences and musicians decades after the notes faded. His approach to playing was formed in part by Marcel Tabuteau, a legendary oboist who trained generations of the world's best players, including Mr. Genovese, his last student.

To 3 1/2 decades of Philadelphia Orchestra listeners, he was the mysterious Swan of Tuonela, the soul of serenity in Dvor?k's "New World" Symphony. Louis Rosenblatt, 81, an English hornist of unfailing equanimity and expressivity, died Monday at Abington Memorial Hospital after enduring several bouts of cancer, said his wife, Renate. English hornists begin life as oboists, and it was so for Mr. Rosenblatt, whose destiny with the more throaty member of the oboe family seemed more like the instrument's pursuit of him than the other way around.

All music is new. The lullaby sung nightly reveals new shades and flights; the almost automatic encore piece astonishes as it turns thoughtful and complex. The new is what makes music necessary. That thought was behind the baroque big band Tempesta di Mare's Friday performance of American premieres of four 250-year-old works by Johann Friedrich Fasch. The ensemble's leaders, Gwyn Roberts and Richard Stone, have been pressing research into Fasch's output and are on the way to resuscitating music enough for several more programs.

Which member of the woodwind quintet is not a woodwind instrument? "Oh, that old trick question" was pretty much the attitude that rumbled through the crowd of children gathered at the Curtis Institute of Music Sunday afternoon for the school's first of two family concerts of the year. These underpublicized samplers in Curtis' Field Hall are designed to introduce children ages 5 to 12 (and their parents) to the orchestra's instrumental families. The classical savvy that came back from the audience might have surprised members of an industry that pretty much worries full-time about cultural marginalization.

KIMMEL CENTER audiences have noticed how often conductors signal Philadelphia Orchestra horn Jennifer Montone to stand and take a bow. It's her first season here as principal horn, coming from the same chair in the St. Louis Symphony, where at 26 she was the youngest woman ever to hold that position with a major American symphony orchestra. Montone, who turned 30 last Sunday, studied this notoriously unpredictable instrument at the Juilliard School in New York. Winner of a host of prizes, she matured playing with the New Jersey Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, among many other affiliations.

More than most people, composers of modern concert music are likely to wonder at times what it's all for. Audiences are only intermittently comprehending. The money is awful, well-prepared performances infrequent. Yet Network for New Music's Sunday concert at Settlement Music School was full of compelling answers in its retrospective 20th-season and 70th-birthday celebration of composer Bernard Rands. The British-born, U.S.-based Rands has won all the big awards and continues receiving high-profile commissions, but hasn't dented the public consciousness nearly as much as post-minimalists and Eastern European mystics.

You can get a fairly good idea of who Andrew Davis is during the sweeter moments of Respighi's The Pines of Rome. The British conductor is sometimes a little short on detail and precision, but you're so grateful for the bloom of sound that it's hard not to smile. He's a bit like Charles Dutoit in that way, and like Dutoit, Davis knows how to put together a smart, coherent program. Yesterday afternoon, for one of his frequent Philadelphia Orchestra appearances, he took some tuneful English oboe solo works and bookended the program with equally tuneful postcards from Italy.

John de Lancie, 80, the virtuoso oboist who headed the Curtis Institute of Music and who helped create a new repertoire for his instrument, died Friday of leukemia in Walnut Creek, Calif. Mr. de Lancie, who joined the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1946 and served as principal from 1954-77, was widely considered one of the great oboists of his time. His playing was a suave combination of refinement and strongly pronounced colors. "You could immediately recognize it was the Philadelphia Orchestra from his oboe playing," said Richard Woodhams, the current principal oboist of the orchestra and a de Lancie prot?g?.

The year's last concert crunch weekend brings us two renowned guests, and gives many ensemble members a shot at the solo spotlight. The revered Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, an exuberant force of nature, made his mark as conductor around the world and, most recently, with Washington's National Symphony. He'll make a rare Academy of Music appearance with the Philadelphia Orchestra, completing their three-week retrospective of Russian music. For this season highlight, Slava has chosen works by two close friends - excerpts from Serge Prokofiev's magnificent "Romeo and Juliet" and the blazing Tenth Symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich.

An urgent, tensile beauty underlines Jan Krzywicki's Concertino for oboe, trumpet, harp and strings. The piece, premiered in two concerts this past weekend by Orchestra 2001 and conductor James Freeman, makes its case through rising and ebbing frictions - frictions between oboe and trumpet, soloists and orchestra. The piece has an unusual genesis. Its composition was suggested by trumpeter Barbara Prugh and commissioned by singer Anni Baker. Baker, who died last year, had been an active supporter of composers and contemporary music, and her death in May occurred as Krzywicki was writing the second movement of the work.