On 15 February Carl Vine’s Oboe Concerto (1996) receives its Japanese premiere from Ken-Ichi Furube and the Izumi Sinfonietta Osaka, conducted by Norichika Iimori.
The 16-minute work is cast in two parts. Vine’s restrained orchestration – a quartet of winds, pairs of horns and trumpets, percussion, and strings – allows the soloist to shine. The first part, cast in a slow-fast-slow arc, opens in a minor mode around a flattened second, allowing the oboe to swirl around its idiomatic arabesques, before a more lively, motoric section with brilliant trills. A dirge-like sequence, built around a repetitive rhythmic cell, concludes this first part. The shorter conclusive section – fast-slow-fast this time – is launched with energetic syncopations, before a melismatic, unmeasured interlude and cadenza for the soloist. The piece concludes in a defiantly major key, as the lively rhythmic music returns.
The work has been recorded on ABC Classics with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Ola Rudner, and Diana Doherty, and by the Australian Youth Orchestra with David Nuttall and Diego Masson. It premiered with the Canberra Symphony, Nuttall (its dedicatee), and Nicholas Braithwaite. In 2006 it received its French and Belgian premieres as part of a tour from the West Australian Youth Orchestra, with Kate Newell as soloist and conducted by Peter Moore, visiting Tours, Paris, and Brussels.
28 February will see the premiere of Vine’s Dreams Undreamt from Simone Young and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the Sydney Opera House. The 6 ½-minute work has been created as part of the orchestra’s 50 Fanfares project and commissioned by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra supported by Geoff Ainsworth AM and Johanna Featherstone. It receives further performances on 1 and 2 March. “I love the idea of a sequence of events so freakish, so other-worldly, that you wouldn’t dream of it”, says Vine of the piece. “But what if you did?” The premiere will mark thirty years of collaboration between orchestra and composer, who celebrated his 70th birthday in 2024.