- Date: ca. 1706 -1710
- Composer: George Frederick Handel
- Period: Baroque (1600-1749)
Review
George Frideric Handel had most likely already left Hamburg for Italy by the time he got around to composing the second of his three true oboe concertos, the Oboe Concerto in B flat major, HWV 301, of 1708 or thereabouts (known as "No. 2" because the earliest-composed of the three oboe concertos, HWV 287 in G minor, was not published until the nineteenth century), and we might reasonably expect Handel's trip to the Mediterranean to have had a marked effect on his view of concerto form and style, which was after all an Italian development. In many ways, however, the Concerto in B flat major, HWV 301, seems little different from its sister work of a half decade or so earlier (HWV 287, composed ca. 1703): like that earlier Oboe Concerto, the Oboe Concerto No. 2 in B flat major is in a four-movement pattern that shows more respect for what was by then very much a German sonata da chiesa tradition as it does for the Italian concerto innovations of the day (particularly the emerging three-movement concerto design) with which Handel, living in Rome, was certainly familiar. Handel was in his early twenties when HWV 301 was written, but still the work can hardly be called a prentice piece (as some of the operas written around the same time indeed can); its suave self-assuredness and lean, no-frills-attached melodic style was just as attractive, perhaps even more attractive, in 1740, when publisher John Walsh first printed the Concerto, as it had been when Handel penned the work some thirty or thirty-five years earlier.The Oboe Concerto No. 2 follows the four-movement slow-fast-slow-fast plan that fans of Handel's (or Corelli's, or Bach's, or a host of other Baroque composers) duo and trio sonatas are already familiar with. None of the three oboe concertos is very long, and HWV 301 may well be the briefest of the bunch. First up is a rich Adagio whose broad oboe melody moves forth atop a gentle, "walking" bassline. The movement ends with a mini-cadenza half-cadence that is only resolved at the start of the following, brilliant (but not especially virtuosic) Allegro. The Siciliano third movement could hardly be more friendly and easygoing, the Vivace finale more aristocratic; rather unusually, the violins double the solo oboe throughout the last movement. ~ Blair Johnston, All Music Guide
