The oboe, perhaps the most temperamental of all instruments, has its own virtuoso tradition stretching back to its earliest days. The early Handel (or Händel, as this German release has it) oboe concertos included on this disc are among the composer's relatively few virtuoso instrumental concertos in the Italian tradition, but they demonstrate that had the circumstances of his employment not led him to write mostly for voices, he would have excelled as a composer of instrumental music. In the three three-movement oboe concertos featured here, he balances the soloistic element with a sense of large-scale timing as ingeniously as Bach or Vivaldi, and the recording serves as a nice complement to recent issues featuring Handel's early Italian cantatas -- several of these have prominent oboe parts. But the real news here is the inclusion of two oboe concertos by Christoph Förster (1693-1745) -- works unearthed by oboist Richard Lauschmann, for whom this disc serves as a kind of tribute. These are not just concertos but extreme concertos, the oboe's counterparts to the brilliant violin works of Francesco Geminiani. The Ensemble Instrumental la Follia, using modern instruments, has a sweet-and-mellow sound that is a little old fashioned in these days of meaty Baroque-violin attacks, but that sound does place the focus where it belongs: on the superb playing of oboist
Lajos Lencsés. He does not falter on any of Förster's collection of tough ornaments and runs, and in his way he's as compelling as one of the famed violin idols. The bottom line is that as a gift, this album would be happily received by any oboist in your life.