Thursday, April 07, 2005

Six Metamorphoses for Oboe- Benjamin BRITTEN

So I'm working on this for proficiency, sorry to keep up the oboe literature, but this is what I listen to, oboe and josh groban.
The six metamorphoses are based on different greek myths, each of the six is like a little story, they are performed unaccompanied so they are very programmatic and that leaves a lot to the oboist as far as a really accurate portrayal of the music.
The first of the six, entitled "PAN" is the story of pan, and how he had a crush on this nymph and was trying to catch her, this playfulness is shown through the opening lines with two sixteenth notes followed by a quarter note with a fermata. It kind of imitates a call on a pan flute. Groups of sixteenth note sextuplets followed by two triplets give a tense and mysterious feel to the piece. There is a quick accelerando of sixteenth notes and then a rallentando which kind of signifies pan finally catching this nymph. This is all followed by another sixteenth note passage at FF dynamic on a high A natural (I'll admit that its strident) but its supposed to be! It represents the nymph screaming in anguish because pan turns her into the pipes that he plays on as the oboe descends in a huge sixteenth note, sextuplet run with a fermata on a low D which is supposed to be played very obnoxiously and grotesquely, this is followed by a little flippy two sixteenth notes and an eighth after a long pause, ending with pans playful attitude.

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