An album for the Viennese oboe: Sebastian Breit (l.) and Stephanie Timoschek (r.) | © Luke Beck
Different than the others! This has a certain, quite laudable tradition in Vienna, which is sometimes backward, sometimes resistant. This is particularly true for Viennese classical music and Viennese musical life in general. And that doesn’t just mean repertoire taste. In Vienna, things are different, starting with the Philharmonic Orchestra, which also provides the State Opera Orchestra. Especially in the instruments.
To this day, the Philharmonic Orchestra is a model for the so-called Viennese sound style: their instruments, especially the wind instruments and percussion, differ from those of other large traditional orchestras. People have simply disconnected themselves from international developments in instrument making. The horn players blow a simple F-horn with pump valves and an attached circularly curved mouthpipe, the Viennese horn. The Viennese clarinet also differs in terms of bore diameter, mouthpiece and reed, as do the bassoon, trombone and trumpet. The use of the Viennese F tuba and the Viennese oboe is noteworthy. The latter differs from the French oboe in its construction, fingerings and sound, so oboists cannot easily switch between the two instruments.
And of course Sebastian Breit, principal oboe of the Vienna State Opera and the Philharmonic since 2019, also plays the Viennese oboe. Just like the musicians in every orchestra there, from the Volksoper to the Symphoniker and the Tonkunstler to the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra – in contrast to the French oboe, which is then used throughout the rest of the world from Linz onwards. Because of its development, it is more similar to the instruments for which Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner and Mahler composed.
Since there was no one who could build a Viennese oboe for several years, a serious crisis developed around 1970 and the instrument was threatened with extinction. Rescue came from Japan, which is fond of everything Austrian and fetishized tradition, when the Yamaha company took up the matter and supplied the Viennese oboists with highly professional instruments for years. In the meantime, local instrument makers are taking over again and the population is now considered secure for the foreseeable future.
Also through musicians like the young but already very self-confident Sebastian Breit. Born in 1998, he began his musical training at the age of six and his oboe playing at the age of eight with Peter Mayrhofer. From 2015 to 2017 he was in the preparatory course at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, and since the winter semester of 2017 he has been studying oboe in Harald Hörth’s class. And he has made it his mission to act as an ambassador for a special instrument that he initially thought was normal because he had not learned any other instrument.
Orchids in the oboe enclave
And so he is now making his instrument the focus of an album released by Supreme Classics, the first dedicated to the Viennese oboe as a chamber music instrument. There are discoveries to be made from the “golden era” of the Viennese oboe. Charming and fine-sounding, the three rarities heard here demonstrate why the Viennese oboe is “different from the others”.
“Well, the Viennese oboe is a niche market. There were never any great soloists,” explains Sebastian Breit. “But there are a few solo concerts. This is the first album with the Viennese oboe repertoire that was recorded by a solo oboist from the Vienna Philharmonic. And I also took part in the ARD competition last year, as the first Viennese oboist in history. It was amazing that they even invited me. And then there was a very nice letter from the jury, which praised my performance and said that it couldn’t be compared.”
And how did this recording come about? “It is primarily the result of collaboration with Abby Yeakle Held. This is a friend of mine who is an oboe professor in America. And who came to Vienna a few years ago on a Fulbright scholarship to research the Viennese oboe. She then discovered that there weren’t even any recordings yet. So she raised money from Ohio State University so that we could make this recording.”
But Sebastian Breit is also sure that he is now operating on a much broader basis than before: “Over the last ten or fifteen years, the level of Viennese oboe players has risen very, very much. That used to always be the problem that there were individual players who were very good, but as a group there was little consistency. Now we are much stronger, also because we can work on optimizations with the manufacturers, fortunately once again domestic, without completely changing the design in the direction of the French oboe Although there are still improvements in the sound of these instruments.”
Breit himself plays on a special oboe, which also has the low B, which otherwise, in modern literature after 1950, has to be taken over by the clarinets. “We were always the pariahs outside of Vienna, that’s over now,” smiles Breit. “We are special, but we have long been able to play anything on the oboe. But this album is intended to bear witness to our idiosyncratic sound.”
There are three sonatas that ideally express the peculiarities of the Viennese music-making and playing tradition and were written specifically for this instrument at the time they were written. The compositions are by Alexander Wunderer (1877 – 1955), himself an oboist with the Vienna Philharmonic, Hans Gál (1890 – 1987) and Karl Pilss (1902 – 1979). When you listen to the pieces, which are interpreted with great dedication, you become aware of how important the instrument was in shaping the much-praised Viennese sound. On this album, which is special in every respect, all facets and accents of the Viennese oboe can now be experienced impressively.
