oboe concerto
alchemy/transmutation/translation
In 2018, David Dies was commissioned to write an oboe concerto for Adam de Sorgo and ensemblenewSRQ, a new music ensemble based on Sarasota, Florida. This was the ensemble’s first commission and the work was premiered at the ensemble’s third season finale, Larger Forces, to be performed along side John Adams’ Son of Chamber Symphony and Michael Shachter’s 5,6,7,8, conducted by co-artistic director, George Nickson, and with co-artistic director, Samantha Bennett, as first violin.
The work was warmly received by the players and the audience, and Adam and David are looking forward to new opportunities to share the work with new ensembles and audiences. Please contact David through this website if you wish to see a perusal score.
Listen to audio from the premiere on SoundCloud
Program Note from the Premiere
Whether by Antonio Vivaldi or Richard Strauss or John Adams, all concertos are driven by the same basic principle: the contrast between the soloist and the ensemble. That contrast is sometimes presents itself as a difference of ability, sometimes a difference in color, sometimes as a kind of competition. Composer David Dies’ concerto, alchemy/transmutation/translation, which was written for ensemblenewSRQ and Adam de Sorgo, re-envisions the relationship between soloist and orchestra as an exploration of three different kinds of transformations.
In the first movement, alchemy, the ensemble is transformed using extended instrumental techniques that imitate the strengths of the oboe in general and de Sorgo in particular: short crisp notes, high thin tones, a vigorous flutter tongue and intense lyricism. From a tight orchestral “buzzing”, the oboe leads the orchestra through a kaleidoscope of sounds, resulting in a spectrum of color and surprising aural illusions.
The second movement, transmutation, is inspired by the relationship between wasps and figs, in which a female wasp crawls into the fig’s immature fruit to lay eggs but is then trapped and digested by the fig tree. The movement casts the orchestra as fig and the oboe as wasp in a theme-and-variations that become increasingly strange until the theme is completely transfigured into something new: sweet, rich, and entirely unlike how it began. Between variations are a series of palindromic interludes, each longer than the last, perhaps growing and deepening in flavor like a maturing fig.
The third movement, translation, translates the Arabic poetic form, the ghazal, into a musical form which recalls Baroque ritornello or Classical rondo. The poetic form is AA-refrain, BB-refrain, CC-refrain, etc., in which each couplet flows logically and seamlessly into the same refrain. However, where the Baroque or Classical forms have connective or contrasting materials, here the musical ghazal reframes the material between refrains as ‘foils’, bringing out different characteristics of the refrain in each return. Where the oboe led the ensemble in the first movement and the ensemble enveloped the oboe in the second, this movement finds a balance between soloist and ensemble.
This work brings a collaboration between the composer and his long-time friend Adam de Sorgo. It has been the composer’s deep pleasure and a privilege to create the concerto specifically for de Sorgo and ensemblenewSRQ, and to see the work come to life under the direction of George Nickson.