Benjamin Britten 6 Metamorphoses after Ovid Op.49 for Oboe Solo (Boosey & Hawkes)

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Britten composed this work for solo oboe for the oboist Joy Boughton who premiered the piece at the Aldeburgh festival in 1951. The 6 movements are programmatic in both their suggestive titles and musical devices. For example, the first movement, “Pan: who played upon the reed pipe which was Syrinx, his beloved,” uses a free rhythm to evoke the mythological character. In the second movement, “Phaethon, who rode upon the chariot of the sun for one day and was hurled into the river Padus by a thunderbolt” Britten composed a fast, moving rhythm to represent the flying chariot. Britten used the expressive marking piagendo or “weeping” for the third movement “Niobe who, lamenting the death of her fourteen children, was turned into a mountain.” The remaining movements are: (4) “Bacchus, at whose feasts is heard the noise of gaggling women's tattling tongues and shouting out of boys,” (5) ”Narcissus, who fell in love with his own image and became a flower” and (6) “Arethusa, who, flying from the love of Alpheus the river god, was turned into a fountain.” Born in Avignon, Bourgue left to study at the Paris Conservatory, where he studied under Étienne Baudo. Shortly after he joined the Algiers Radio Orchestra during the Algerian war in the 1950s. After winning the Geneva Competition in 1963, Bourgue rose to prominence to British audiences when in 1965 he won the oboe section of the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra International Wind Competition where he gave the premiere of Malcolm Arnold’s Fantasy for Oboe. Under the direction of conductor Charles Münch, Bourgue became Principal Oboe of the Orchestre de Paris – a position he held for 12 years. Bourgue's reputation as a virtuoso oboist earned him an international following and he performed as a soloist with some of the world's most distinguished orchestras, including the London Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, under the batons of Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim and Riccardo Chailly. Britten composed this work for solo oboe in 1951, completing it in time for its premiere during the Aldeburgh Festival of that year. As had become traditional in the early Festivals, there was a concert on Thorpeness Meare, with soloists and audiences alike in rowing boats, and the Six Metamorphoses were first heard on the water: the intrepid soloist was Janet Boughton. As Sarah Bardwell describes in this week’s film, this concert was recently recreated with Nicholas Daniel as the boat-bound soloist.

Phaeton, "who rode upon the chariot of the sun for one day and was hurled into the river Padus by a thunderbolt." Bourgue's passion for oboe performance extended to his teaching, he was appointed P rofessor of O boe at the Paris Conservatory, a position he held for 13 years, and subsequently a similar position at the Geneva Conservatory he held until 2011. Bacchus, "at whose feasts is heard the noise of gaggling women's tattling tongues and shouting out of boys." BBC broadcasts as a soloist, and in 1937 gave the first performance (with the Boyd Neel Strings) of the concerto her father hadThe French oboist Maurice Bourgue has died at the age of 83. ‘His tone is delicate and sweet, with the subtlest of gradations’ is how Gramophone’s Lionel Salter described Bourgue’s recording of the Poulenc Oboe Sonata (Decca), a work he frequently performed and recorded.

I shall also consider the significance of the instrumentation of this piece. The choice of unaccompanied oboe to illustrate Ovid's texts may reflect a view that the work concerns the individual, or the responsibility of individual moral choice. Yet the use of the oboe also draws attention to its classical associations, particularly with Bacchus, and thus is an aesthetic and symbolic contrast to Apollo's lyre. This recording sets out to provide a complete overview of Benjamin Britten’s masterpiece for solo oboe, Six Metamorphoses after Ovid, Op 49. Not only is this work unique in the oboe repertoire but it is also one of the most distinctive examples of solo single-line instrumental writing from any age. It is hoped that performers, listeners, students and teachers will find it a useful resource for the understanding or preparation of such a wonderful work.

Summary

Described at the time as ‘a real open-air piece written by way of relaxation during the creation of Billy Budd’, the Metamorphoses might appear on first acquaintance to be an inconsequential item in the composer's output. However, Britten's choice of Ovid as his muse is significant. The Metamorphoses is illustrative of an overarching theme that had an important but hitherto largely unrecognized effect on the composer. Britten's interest in classical mythology was encouraged by some key influences, including the novelists Hermann Melville and E. M. Forster, the poet W. H. Auden and Britten's lifelong companion Peter Pears. This absorption reached its peak in the late 1940s and early 1950s after the composition of The Rape of Lucretia (1946) and culminated in the creation of Billy Budd (1951) and the Metamorphoses. I will suggest that Britten's interest was more than passing, and indeed bears comparison to the importance in his repertoire of the Christian tradition. meanwhile I continue to derive much pleasure from your previous issues - especially the Britten compilation, which is superb." Raymond Monk, Leicester, UK