Unlike George Frideric Handel's two other true oboe concertos (HWV 287 and 301, both early works), the Oboe Concerto in B flat major, HWV 302a—known as No. 1 though in fact it was the last to be composed—is not a product of Handel's continental career but rather a work written, or perhaps arranged is a better word, long after Handel had moved, permanently as it would turn out, to England. This Oboe Concerto No. 1 is actually not music originally conceived of as a solo concerto for oboe or any other music; it is instead nothing more or less than a recomposition of two overtures originally written for use with the Chandos Anthems of 1717-1719, each of which originally had two movements, for a grand and wholly appropriate total of four movements in the Oboe Concerto, HWV 302a. Such apparently ramshackle construction was by no means an unusual thing for either Handel or his publisher John Walsh, neither of whom felt the same constant pressure to be "original" that modern musicians tend to and who never hesitated to re-use good material when need arose. HWV 302a was first published along with the other Oboe Concerto in B flat major, HWV 301, in Walsh's Select Harmony of 1740.

Happily enough, the conjunction of the two Chandos Anthem overtures results in a four-movement slow-fast-slow-fast design—in truth, the opening movement is marked Vivace, but one would never guess it from the medium-paced dotted style of the music—very much in keeping with Handel's usual concerto practice. If one is seeking virtuoso fireworks, however, one had better look elsewhere, for the Oboe Concerto No. 1 may well be the least overtly soloistic of Handel's concertos for solo instrument. In the opening movement, one might not even guess the work to be an oboe concerto at all; a little violin duet that pops up three times is far more outgoing than anything the oboe has to offer until the very end of the movement. Similarly, it is the first violin that introduces the subject of the following Fuga, and when the oboe joins in, it is not alone but rather doubled by the strings. The Andante third movement is gorgeous, and has as a result gained something of a fame outside the concerto; here the oboist really does get a chance to shine with some wonderful cantabile lines. There are fiery, dramatic gestures aplenty in the Allegro finale, but spread with great egalitarianism throughout the instruments. Again it is not until the dying bars of the movement that the oboe bursts forth to make the Concerto its own.

The work now known as HWV 302b, of which just one movement seems to have survived, is the same music arranged for two horns, two oboes, and strings.

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