 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Hiroshi
Date: 2000-06-08 05:12
Reading Rossi's page, I came across with the expression "'Koktan' clarinet owned by Leopord Wlach of Vienna Symphony". What is Koktan?
http://www.rossiclarinet.cl/models.htm
It is strange that Koktan in Japanese means black wood used for expensive buddism pray box seasoned in Kanazawa prefecture.
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Author: Eoin
Date: 2000-06-08 07:35
A quick search of the web shows that Koktan is a person's surname, so it is likely that this is the maker's name. I don't think it has anything to do with the Japanese word koktan meaning a type of black wood.
Such coincidences happen all the time. In England, Blackwood is also a person's surname.
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Author: larry
Date: 2000-06-08 13:43
Why would one necessarily rule out the connection with Japanese wood, simply because of a rather weak surname connection based on a web search. I'd give more credit to Hiroshi's research. As a german speaker and having spent much time in Germany and Austria, I've never heard of the surname "Koktan." An don't forget that Germany-Austria-Japan had it's own relationship around the time that Wlach was active.
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Author: Willie
Date: 2000-06-10 07:01
Those surnames can get tricky. Two of my shipmates were transfered to a new Coast Guard unit in Yokosuka, Japan as it was thought (by the folks in Washington) that they were Japanese-Americans. Ohara was an Irishman and the other Sakura was Polish.
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Author: beejay
Date: 2000-06-10 14:52
Koktan was a Viennese maker of Oehler-system clarinets, according to Anthony Baines book on Woodwind Instruments. Wlach, a famous Viennese clarinetist, played one.
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Author: alph
Date: 2014-02-26 22:56
I came across this old post about the Koktan clarinets. On vacation in Austria I bought a pair of clarinets made by Franz Koktan. The owner told me that they belonged to Leopold Wlach of the VPO. They had a marvellous tone. Luis Rossi borrowed them to examine and they stood example for his very good viennese bore clarinets. Later the pair went to Japan.
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2014-02-26 23:47
Victor Polatschek also played a set of Koktans in the Boston Symphony. Boston now has that set in their museum as you can see in the article and photo below.
See http://www.amusicalvision.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-long-and-woodwinding-road-of-two.html.
The Koktans exemplified the old Viennese ideal as well as the Oscar Oehler clarinets of 1910 (Carlos Casanova has one of those, beautifully refurbished and very playable) exemplified the old German ideal. When I first started playing clarinet around 1959, I nearly wore out Wlach's Westminster recordings of the Brahms Trio and Quintet, the Mozart Quintet and Concerto, and the Schubert Octet--all, I believe, performed on the Koktan instruments.
They literally don't make them like that any more, Those instruments have a truly dark and covered sound--all without cocobolo!
Too bad that before you let them go to Japan, you didn't record something on them--maybe the Brahms sonatas.
Post Edited (2014-02-27 14:44)
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2014-02-26 20:14
If you want to see modern day Koctans, check out the Vienna Philharmonic (perhaps the New Years Eve Concert). All the oboe players still use Koktan oboes (they have a bulbous top end into which you insert the reed).
.................Paul Aviles
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Author: Barry Vincent
Date: 2014-02-27 01:31
Attachment: 2007_0815VienneseOboe0036.JPG (1280k)
Here is a Viennese (Koctan ?) Oboe that I was fiddling with at John Armstrong's repair shop. An entirely different and fascination Oboe design to the usual Conservatoire or Thumb Plate system that we are use to seeing.
I hadn't noted at the time what 'make' it was.
My Oboe is a Howarth Combination Conservatoire/ Thumbplate model. The 'best of both worlds"
BJV
"The Clarinet is not a horn"
Skyfacer
Post Edited (2014-02-26 20:41)
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2014-02-27 02:38
Zuleger was the most famous Viennese oboe maker - Yamaha also built Viennese oboes for a while for the Viennese market (the YOB-804 being one of them) and there are several small companies still making them (Christian Rauch, Guntram Wolf and Karl Rado are a few).
http://usa.yamaha.com/product_archive/winds/yob-804/?mode=model
I'd like to have a set of oboe joints made with the Viennese outer profile to the top joint and bell only (but still with an S5/XL bore) and transfer my S5 keywork onto them. Obviously it will need slightly different 8ve keys made to fit the bulge in the top joint.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
Post Edited (2014-02-27 02:42)
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Author: BobD
Date: 2014-02-27 16:08
Many thanks to Hiroshi and "seabreeze" for the posts re "Koktan". Dr. deLuise's article linked by seabreeze is a must read for clarinetists.
Bob Draznik
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