Souvenirs from Vienna

Theodor Guschlbauer

Conductor Theodor Guschlbauer (born 1939, Vienna) has directed over a hundred orchestras and more than two thousand opera, operetta, and ballet performances internationally.

Guschlbauer studied conducting under the guidance of Hans Swarowsky, Lovro von Matačić, and Herbert von Karajan. He served for several years as Music Director of the Lyon Opera in France and as General Music Director in Linz, Austria. From 1983 to 1997, Guschlbauer was Principal Conductor of the Philharmonic Orchestra and Music Director of the Opera in Strasbourg, France. Until 2002, he held the position of General Music Director of the Rhineland-Palatinate State Orchestra in Germany. Since 2002, Guschlbauer has been active on podiums worldwide as guest conductor and continues to share his expertise as member of the faculty at the Strasbourg Conservatory. He is regularly invited to conduct at renowned European music festivals.

Theodor Guschlbauer is passionate about Mozart's music: ”Someone who can master Mozart impeccably then has the full arsenal!”

https://www.rbartists.at/en/artists/theodor-guschlbauer


Hannu Perttilä

Hannu Perttilä has been serving as the principal oboist of the Helsinki Philharmonic since 2015. Perttilä graduated from the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts in Helsinki.

A few years ago, Perttilä performed Ralph Vaughan Williams' Concerto for oboe and orchestra as a soloist with the Lappeenranta City Orchestra. He regards the roles of the soloist and the orchestra in the concerto as quite traditional; however, they also encompass elements of dialogue and chamber music, accompanied by occasional playful nuances. He particularly appreciates the abundant use of pentatonic scales in Vaughan Williams' concerto, as it reminds him of his early years in Ethiopia where his parents were working at that time.

Hannu Perttilä considers the solo part of the Vaughan Williams' concerto to be a perfect fit for the oboe. ’Often, oboists play with restraint and timidity, but oboe playing can be generous and courageous,’ Perttilä has said. ’The joy of playing is the most important thing!’
 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Symphony No. 25 in G Minor, “The Little”

Though much background information about the works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) can be deduced from his correspondence – when he wrote them, who first played them and where, even how much he was paid for them – there is nothing to explain his choice of keys. Only two of his symphonies are in a minor key, and the same minor key at that: the “Great” G minor, no. 40 and the “Little” G minor, no. 25. The same applies to his piano concertos and string quartets. His friend Joseph Haydn likewise had a preference for major keys in his symphonies; few are in a minor key. The reason would appear to be simple: Mozart, in particular, left nothing to chance; composing in a major key was easier, took less time and was therefore more sensible financially. His “Little” G minor symphony of 1773 is, for a composer only 17 years old, astonishingly mature, and marks a leap into much higher musical spheres than those inhabited by his earlier works in this genre.
 

Ralph Vaughan Williams: Concerto for Oboe and Strings

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) was a National Romantic composer through and through, more so even than Sibelius in Finland, Grieg in Norway and Dvořák in Bohemia. For Ralph had a mission: to create an idiom that was utterly English in spirit, in its harmonies, melodies and imagery. To this end, he sought inspiration in his predecessors such as William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons and Henry Purcell, and in the rolling hills, green fields and meadows of his homeland. Almost all his works can be described as nostalgic. Most of them also bear traces of the hundreds of folk songs he collected as he roamed the country villages of early 20th-century England. He wrote his Concerto for Oboe and Strings in 1944, in his childhood Surrey home. While the bombs pulverised nearby London, he concentrated on composing and tending his garden, deliberately shutting the horrors of war from his mind. The oboe occupies the leading role in this concerto of endless melodies evocative of pastoral tunes and images of peaceful landscapes and mindscapes.
 

Franz Schubert: Symphony No. 6 in C Major, “The Little”

It is something of a paradox that of all the symphonies by Franz Schubert (1797–1828), that best known is “The Unfinished”. He worked on 13 but fully finished only seven, and not one is recorded as having been performed during his lifetime. The one billed as “The Great C major” (1828) for a concert at the Vienna Musikverein a couple of weeks after his death was said to be so difficult that the orchestra refused to play it and instead chose the “Little” C Major of 1818. Decades would pass before any of the others got a hearing. The “Little” C major, no. 6, was cast on a far larger symphonic scale than the preceding five, which is why Schubert himself originally gave it the name “The Great”. In spirit it is still in the light Classical vein, though the heavy footsteps of Beethoven may be detected right at the beginning. The second movement swings along like a Haydn slow movement and sings like a Rossini duet, but then Schubert was renowned for his hundreds of solo songs. The scherzo might well have been modelled on the third movement of Beethoven’s seventh, but the juggling with keys in the finale is unmistakably Schubert’s.