Beginning gently, becoming intense, and fading away into gentleness, this work for oboe solo is a fine illustration of the instrument's pastoral character. It has an American character and is attractive despite being relatively "modern" in its harmonies. After founding the chamber ensemble the Da Capo Chamber Players in 1969 and serving as its pianist, Joan Tower (born in 1938) began to attract attention through the music she wrote for the group. Orchestration of her chamber piece Amazon led to a commission to write her first original piece for full orchestra, Sequoia, which convinced St. Louis Symphony Orchestra music director Leonard Slatkin to invite her to become composer-in-residence for the orchestra. While in that position, she wrote two pieces for orchestra, Silver Ladders and this concerted piece for oboe and string orchestra. Although Tower has written several concertos, this one differs in one respect: in all the other cases, an aspiring soloist asked her for a composition. But in this case, it was she who approached Peter Bowman, principal oboist of the St. Louis Symphony, and asked if she could write a piece for him. In the notes for the first performances, Tower described the work: "The Island is remote, lush, tropical with stretches of white beach interspersed with thick, green jungle. Above is a large, powerful, and brightly colored bird that soars, glides, spirals up, and plummets with folded wings as it dominates but lives in complete harmony with its island home." It is tempting to ascribe this imagery to Tower's childhood—although she was born in New Rochelle, NY, she spent many years in South America. Island Prelude is about ten minutes long. Tower has written two other arrangements of the work as well as the original string orchestra accompaniment. One is a simple reduction of the supporting ensemble to solo strings. The other is for woodwind quintet, a format that she has said sounds "heavier." This description is written with reference to the string orchestra version. The work begins with a distant view of the landscape and slow, sustained music with very slow harmonic motion. Initially, the succession of chords is completely consonant. As the work moves on, dissonances increase. The oboe takes its place above the string "cushion" as the dissonances begin their function of pulling the harmonies toward resolutions. The oboe line tends to float around single notes, with decorations (melismas) around them. These passing melismatic notes, in turn, interact with the harmonies and make them more active, their held notes more and more demanding to move. While she wrote the music, Tower had Samuel Barber's famous Adagio for strings in mind as an example of a single, highly controlled line of rising intensity. Like that work, her music rises to an intense release. In this instance, it comes in the form of two active cadenzas for the oboe solo in a flurry of rising fast notes. In the end, the music relaxes into slow, quiet sounds that again give the impression of the island viewed from a distance.

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