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Doublereed Archive - Posting 000086.txt from 2007/07
From: Keith Sklower <sklower@-----.EDU>
Subj: [DR-L] On the variability of oboes & sound
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 00:45:11 -0400
Shawn wrote:
}Just as Matthew feels that the Josef oboes, less one, all produce the same
}sound and color, I feel the same way about the Yamaha oboes.
}They all sound and feel exactly the same to me with no potential
}for color change -- at least not with my reeds.
I'm wondering if Shawn tried both the YOB-841 (american bore) and
YOB-831 (European style).... I've tried both and they are radically
different from each other.
The short story about the latter is that is what Roger Wiemeyer plays
these days; he let me try his with his reed.
And I have a longer (funny) story about the former. I happened to be
standing around Forrests one afternoon a couple of years ago
(I think I had managed to loose my swab and wanted to get another one)
and in walks Eugene (Yvgeney) Izotov.
The person at the counter asked if Izotov had ever tried the Yamaha's
and offered to bring one out. Izotov said he hadn't brought his reeds with
him. The counter person offered to give him one of Ellie Duste's reeds
to try it with; Izotov said that he really felt the reed should be
adjusted to the instrument, and that he hadn't brought his kife or
plaque either.
Whereupon a knife and plaque and shotglass of water are placed on the counter.
Izotov dunks the reed, starts playing a few notes, whittles a bit, tries
again (repeat that a few times), then starts playing opera excerpts
(gloriously of course). Sounding very much like the way Izotov usually
does.
Comments that it plays nicely but the keywork is narrower and too different
from what he's used to play on comfortably, but he would recommend them
to his students, and returns the reed the counter person.
I offer to buy the reed and ask if I might try the oboe. My offer is
accepted (I still have the reed).
I (for some reason, maybe because I heard another piece of Mozarts on
the radio) start playing the opening to the C-minor octet.
Izotov looks and me asks why I know the piece; I tell him I've performed
it twice and was very fond of it. He said that was the first piece
of chamber music he played on the SF Symphony chamber series.
He goes on to tell me how out of tune I played it, how everybody
at the moscow conservatory had perfect pitch, etc.
I smile ... (A couple of years previously Wiesmeyer had given me
a much kinder, gentler, correction about my pitch by merely starting
to harmonize with me while I was playing an orchestra excerpt, and
told me on that occasion about practicing with a pitch-producing
tuner as a drone).
I was not a total stranger to Izotov at that point, so he might
have felt a little more leeway to offer advice than to his students
or randoms - althought it was the first time he heard me *play*;
I was the recording engineer at another chamber concert, and he
liked that recording so much he had sent to Gomberg and remembered
me from it.
So, I did get to try an american bore yamaha with a reed tuned up
by an expert just for it. And it was somewhat reminiscent of playing
on my Royale - which is like driving a mack truck at times...
whereas, in my estimation, the european bore yamaha is rather more
sports-car like.
Hope y'all enjoyed the yarn at least,
Curmudgeonly Yours,
Keith Sklower
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