Vivaldi wrote a large number of oboe concertos, perhaps 20 depending on various disputes over authenticity and whether to count concertos in which the oboe is part of a larger concertino group. The cutoff point for the latter group is not clear, which is one of the things that makes these pieces interesting. It's not as large a group as the 37 bassoon concertos, but the oboe concertos seem to have arisen at various points in Vivaldi's career, and it's worth putting a group of them together on a release like the present one ...
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Vivaldi wrote a large number of oboe concertos, perhaps 20 depending on various disputes over authenticity and whether to count concertos in which the oboe is part of a larger concertino group. The cutoff point for the latter group is not clear, which is one of the things that makes these pieces interesting. It's not as large a group as the 37 bassoon concertos, but the oboe concertos seem to have arisen at various points in Vivaldi's career, and it's worth putting a group of them together on a release like the present one from Italy's Tactus label. Common to most of them is a high level of virtuosity, in terms of both finger dexterity and breath control; annotator Giovanni Tasso writes despairingly of "phrases requiring the performers to execute interminable passages while practically holding their breath." The treatment of the solo instrument is subtle and unusual, by no means restricted to a strict opposition of oboe and strings, and Vivaldi indicated the ambiguity with a written reference in the...
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