Ferlendis composed four oboe concertos which, up until now, existed only in nineteenth-century copies of the scores, with only one being recorded. This is the first time these have been recorded on CD. Although the concertos contain some clear elements of Mozartian coinage, their melodic wealth of ideas and natural elegance point to the composer’s Italian temperament. Six trios, here in the instrumentation for oboe, flute, and bassoon, round off the recording.

Ray Still, principal oboist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for forty years, was praised by the Chicago Tribune for his “distinctively rich, mellow, singing tone”. He joins Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman and Lynn Harrell in this programme of oboe quartets, with Mozart as the centrepiece.

Famous Oboe Concertos" is a mistaken title to give a collection in which none of the works is really well-known and two of them not even specifically for oboe. Leelair's Concerto, for violin, flute or oboe, is a poised, elegant work, well worth including in the record; Vivaldi's D minor Concerto, for either violin or oboe, is a light, cheerful piece, very agreeable in manner without making any claims to greatness.

Amazing to think in these days of plenty, when Vivaldi's sun has surely never shone brighter, that there can still be examples of his 660 or so concertos which have yet to be heard on record, but this invaluable set contains one such work, the G minor concerto RV459, as well as all the other works which the Venetian composer originally wrote for an instrument for which he evidently conceived a great affection, well suited as it is to the virtuoso roulades and trills which distinguish his writing for his own instrument, the violin, as well as testing the soloist with great demands on breath control in the fast outer movements and lyrical intensity in the central slow ones.

Anthony Camden, for years principal oboe of the LSO, here makes a very welcome solo appearance on disc, playing with typical point and style, using his attractively reedy tone. The regular oboe concertos are well supplemented by the Suite in G minor as edited by Camden, where he is joined by the prize-winning Julia Girdwood on the second oboe. The Otho Overture too features prominent roles for oboes in duet. Ward and the City of London Sinfonia are sympathetic accompanists using modern instruments. First-rate sound from All Saints, East Finchley.

The oboe was a special instrument for Bruno Maderna, and he filled these three concertos (composed in 1962-3, 1967 and 1973) with solo lines in which sharply fragmented and fluently rhapsodic materials constantly interact. Heinz Holliger, in turn, pours all his unrivalled dexterity and capacity for infinitely varied expressive nuance into the performances here. Yet the music remains problematic.

An hour of music for solo oboe, anyone? Don't knock it until you try it. This album is an exemplary effort not only by the somehow appropriately named oboist Yeon-Hee Kwak but also by the engineers at Germany's MDG label, who provide a resonant castle-hall setting that perfectly illuminates (resonates?) the registral effects on which oboe music depends. The program is diverse and challenges both Kwak's technical and expressive abilities, opening with Bach, whose absolute music transcended the distinction. The Partita for solo oboe, BWV 1013, is a transcription of a partita for solo flute, and the concluding Tango-Etudes of Astor Piazzolla were also originally flute works.

A lot has been written about the multifaceted relationship between Robert and Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms. Maria Sournatcheva opens another audio chapter in this story. Together with the pianist Aleksandr Shaikin, this principal oboist from Winterthur explores the musical interrelations waiting for discovery in the chamber music of the three and very particularly in some of their songs. In the process she brings to light so many a veritable surprise. The critics showered superlatives on Maria Sournatcheva in their reviews of her debut SACD featuring oboe concertos by Russian composers, which even brought her an ECHO Klassik award.

This new recording was recorded in Berlin, not in Venice as the cover says. It’s also pretty big on personality – that of Albrecht Mayer himself, principal oboist of the Berlin Phil, photographed on the cover ‘playing’ (?) his oboe at the prow of a gondola and several times in double-page spreads in the brochure. He actually appears twice in some of the two-page spreads. All of which made me fear the worst. I’m very pleased to report, however, that my worst expectations were not realised; far from it, in fact – this turned out to be a most enjoyable recording, very well performed and recorded.

Oboists are not generally among the ranks of the most prominent instrumental soloists, but this delightful album featuring German player Albrecht Mayer, the principal oboist of the Berlin Philharmonic, makes a strong case for wider solo exposure for the instrument. Bonjour Paris is a survey of (mostly) French music of post-Romantic, Impressionist, and conservative contemporary vintage, and some pieces feature Mayer playing the English horn or the oboe d'amore. Some of the works were originally scored for oboe, such as Françaix's L'Horloge de Flore, d'Indy's Fantaisie sur des themes populaires français, and Swiss composer Gotthard Odermatt's "Été," written for Mayer and imagined as an oboe concerto that Ravel might have written.

A new Naxos recording offering two of Hofmann's oboe concerti and two concerti for oboe and harpsichord proves that the prolific Viennese composer could write nice tunes and develop them with spiffy efficiency. Both technical bravura and the expressive colours of the oboe are well explored in these conventional but vivacious three-movement concerti. Stefan Schilli (principal oboe of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra), Jeno Jando (harpsichord) and the Nicolaus Esterhazy Sinfonia under Bela Drahos play with superb panache and discipline; the sound engineering is wonderfully transparent and detailed notes are included.

Heinz Holliger is widely considered the greatest oboe virtuoso of modern times. He is also a noted composer and conductor; as a composer he is one of the few who has maintained a strict adherence to serial procedures. Holliger has been the recipient of many prizes, including the Robert Schumann Prize of the City of Zwickau in Germany, and he is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The fourth volume in The Fibonacci Sequence’s acclaimed series of CD’s focussing on a solo instrument. In this case it’s the turn of the oboe, featuring Christopher O’Neal. The Fibonacci Sequence is now well established as one of the finest chamber ensembles in Britain. This witty collection of music for oboe and chamber ensemble, highlights, as oboist Christopher O’Neal describes “the humour of Françaix, the irony of Poulenc, the brilliance of Crusell and the easy charm of Alwyn.” But, he adds, “the two Mozart pieces have it all, and in spades!”

Bohemian born Josef Fiala (1748-1816) was renowned as an oboist, receiving a letter of recommendation from none other than Leopold Mozart. So it is no surprise that his compositions often favor that wind instrument, including the two quartets on this recording. Both follow a four movement structure, each a minuet in a different sequence. In the opening ‘Allegro spirituoso’ of the F Major Quartet, the oboe immediately grabs the spotlight and never lets go. With a faint violin as an echo, the solo wind drives this relentlessly charming 1st movement through a brief minor keyed interlude and solo passages brimming with triplets.