Vincenzo Bellini - Oboe Concerto in E-flat major (1823)

Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini (3 November 1801 – 23 September 1835) was an Italian opera composer, who was known for his long-flowing melodic lines for which he was named "the Swan of Catania". Many years later, in 1898, Giuseppe Verdi "praised the broad curves of Bellini's melody: 'there are extremely long melodies as no-one else had ever made before'.

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Oboe Concerto in E-flat major (c. 1823)

I. Maestoso e deciso (0:00)
II. Larghetto cantabile (0:19)
III. Allegro polonese (3:25)

Christoph Hartmann, oboe and Ensemble Berlin
EMI recording

In 1819, at the age of eighteen, Bellini received a scholarship to the Conservatorio di San Sebastiano in Naples. He composed the Oboe Concerto during his studies. Gramophone called the piece "a product of his youth". Some other works composed by Bellini during the period included sacred music and fifteen symphonies (six of which are lost). In addition, fragments exist for two other concertos for woodwind instruments composed around the time: a bassoon concerto in G major that remains incomplete and a draft for a flute concerto in A major.

The concerto has often been noted for its operatic qualities and the usage of bel canto themes in the solo oboe part. Valeria Lucentini, in an introduction to an edition of the piece, wrote, "Bellini devolves the lively and intense expressiveness of vocal music to the cantabile. As a result, Bellini places particular emphasis on the solo instrument, in effect giving it the same attention as the human voice." She also stated that this characteristic was possibly influenced by some of the wordless songs composed by Bellini's teacher, Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli.

Program notes for a United States Military Academy concert wrote that "The lyrical writing in the concerto is so indicative of Bellini's style that one could easily believe it to belong to one of Bellini's operas, and yet the work is still thoroughly idiomatic to the oboe." Hyperion Records opined that "Bellini's juxtaposition of lyrical and more rigorous passages gives the little work an expertly managed inner balance." Gramophone referred to the concerto as one that "extends the past rather than smooths the passage to the twentieth-century revival of the form," contrasting it with Domenico Cimarosa's constructed oboe concerto by Arthur Benjamin as an example of a 20th-century 'revival' of a work that was not originally made.