John Harbison is a leading American composer. Most of his music has been tonal. His style is often post-Romantic and contemplative.

The Concerto for oboe, clarinet, and strings is a rare example of a work that is primarily Neo-Classical in style. This style, of course, is more often Neo-Baroque than directly evocative of the Classical era in music, and Harbison's work is in effect a concerto grosso. Since the clarinet (invented in the first half of the eighteenth century) missed being available to the great composers of the Baroque concerto (and, hence, there are no concerti grossi of any substance using that instrument) it was one of Harbison's pleasures in writing the work, he ways, to use the clarinet in such a work.

Harbison composed the work in 1984 at Token Creek, Wisconsin. There are versions of it as a chamber sextet and as a concerto with string orchestra. The first performance was in its sextet version by oboist Allan Vogel, clarinetist David Shifrin, and Chamber Music Northwest. The string orchestra version was with Sarah Bloom, oboe, Charles Russo, clarinet, and the New College Music Festival Orchestra, Paul Wolf, conducting.

Although the music is played continuously, it does fall into three distinct movements, marked "Declamando" (declamatory), "Larghetto," and "Furioso." Harbison adheres to a convention that had major importance in the Baroque era, that is, the maintaining of a single "affect" (or single mood) in each one of the movements.

As the tempo marking of the first movement implies, the mood in the first movement is stern and declamatory, though rhythmically alert and quick. The work's kinship to the opening movements of J. S. Bach's Brandenburg Concertos and Stravinsky's Dumbarton Oaks Concerto is evident here.

The slowish middle movement is pensive and tense, with flowing dialogue between the performers. (Incidentally, Harbison conceived the work with oboe, the clarinet, and the string players as a body having pretty much equal roles. The two winds sustain a dialog throughout, with the strings often seeming to comment on or musically support it.)

The final movement's "Furioso" tempo marking refers to the driving, almost jazz-like tempo. It is a rapid-fire discussion, though not actually "furious"; the mood could be called aggressively bouncy in a jazzy way. One of the motives is very close in contour to a riff used in Aaron Copland's Clarinet Concerto, but as one recalls the work while hearing this one, it is clear that the music is entirely different in mood and technique.

Harbison in notes for a recording of the concerto cited a critic who called the concerto "scenes from a marriage." Harbison called this observation "astute" and added, "[t]his metaphorical marriage between solo winds and strings contains quarrels, precarious balances, comic relief, misunderstandings, and eventual unanimity."

© All Music Guide

Portions of Content Provided by All Music Guide.
© 2008 All Media Guide, LLC. All Music Guide is a registered trademark of All Media Guide, LLC.