 My Oboe Concerto was commissioned by RTÉ (Ireland's national broadcasting corporation)
for Matthew Manning, who at the time was lead oboist of the National Symphony
Orchestra of Ireland. The work was begun in 1993 after my return from a trip
to the Middle East where I had seen many of the camps housing Palestinian refugees,
and had passed through Sabra and Shatila, where in 1982 Lebanese fascist militias
had massacred thousands of Palestinians under the watchful eye of Ariel Sharon
and his Israeli soldiers.
These sights and the reflections occasioned by them influenced the shape
of the work. The soloist never plays the role of strutting hero typical of
the romantic conerto, but is treated like an exile from the orchestra, the
role of which is often oppressive. A soprano saxophone mimics the soiloist
from the orchestra, as if it had usurped its place.
While in Richard Strauss's Oboe Concerto, for example, the orchestra is reduced
and the musical language correspondingly understated, as if the very use of
solo oboe induced neo-classicism, here the soloist faces a full-sized orchestra
with triple woodwind, a huge battery of percussion, and organ. The struggle
is unequal, and the soloist is often engulfed by orchestral mass – only to
emerge bloodied but unbowed.
The third and final movement is nonetheless the only deliberately programmatic
one. It begins with a merciless evocation of military/political brutality,
through which emerges the harsh sound of the solo oboe's lowest note. Throughout
most of the movement the orchestra is chained to its lower register, while
the oboe winds its way tortuously upwards. After an episode of sinuous lamentation,
the oiboe rises to its highest region at which point the orchestra is released
from its confinement, as if the liberation of the exile simultaneously liberates
the oppressor . There is a colossal climax which is too jubilant to last
and collapses into desolation. Even the oboe's final plaint is taken over by
the soprano saxophone, which has the last word. 
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