Author: oboeblank
Date: 2007-03-17 16:38
Do a little creative composing! If you can get away with playing an oboe solo on English Horn or Clarinet than do that. I don't think that it will be detrimental to the score to change the orchestration. I do remember going to see a show when I was a young know-it-all,[now I'm just an old know-it-all] and being really distracted by the oboe player who was playing every wind instrument know to humanity. He had little jugs of water with soaking reeds and feathers and swabs and cigarette papers and a plaque a he kept going through his collection of reeds...it made me nauseous just looking at him.
Many years later I found myself in a similar situation, having the great opportunity to play the Bach Mass in B Minor, Chirstmas Oratorio and the Saint Mathew Passion. The First two require you to play oboe and oboe d'amore and the Passion uses oboe, oboe d'amore and English Horn. Three finicky reeds for three finicky beasts in a cool church; how do you spell disaster? Even Bach, the genius didn't use his noggin when he scored sections. You get playing on oboe d'amore for a couple of movements, then you have to switch to oboe-a cold oboe for the chorales, then back to d'amores the next movement. Now granted, played chorales and the big tune in a musical is different, but I wanted to do what Bach had written, and you probably want to do what is in your book, but at some point you have to make your life easier and blow the horn in your hands.
As far as the reeds go, I kept them in my reed case. They don't dry out as fast and they stay pretty safe, which is good when space is at a premium.
Good luck and let us know how things go.
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