It Takes Two

It’s been an amazing journey. And always it’s been the two of us. Of course I could always have just gone and recorded sonatas, suites or oboe concerti! In a major, c minor, or f diminished….and preferably all by the same composer. Oboe, for example, with an ensemble, or with one of those great symphony orchestras. An orchestra, after all, is the Rolls-Royce of all ensembles, the perfect music machine: melting violins, roaring basses, pealing trumpets, and rabble-rousing kettledrums, and that’s only the beginning. It was tempting….. But no more tempting than the idea of doing something different, for once! It ‘s been a musical trip around the world: criss-cross through the Netherlands, by way of Hungary, the Czech Republic, back to the Netherlands, via Argentina, England, Moravia, to Italy. And I could hardly have traveled lighter: no ensemble, no beautiful orchestra, just the two of us. I looked for a traveling companion in each country. But (and I have to say, it makes traveling like this more fun) each time it was a different one: oboe with viola, oboe with soprano, with clarinet, bass clarinet, cymbalom, bandoneon, claves, marimba, bar-piano, ghetto-blaster. On the road with musical friends, friends with whom my adventures were always special, but each time totally different. Compositions without directly apparent connections with each other: emotional music (Bittov, Janek), music with humor and satire (Andriessen, ter Veldhuis), serious music (Vaughan Williams), music full of grief (Bartk), passion (Piazzolla ), boldness (Burgers), poetry (Morini), and apparent abstraction ( Birtwistle, Kurtg). Music from completely different cultures. From the contemporary scene or from not so very long ago. A multicolored combination: red, dark red, yellow, green, and purple. Music with a fast or a slow pulse, reserved or temperamental, spicy and sometimes very spicy indeed. But always original and real. Bart Schneeman