The Concerto for Oboe and Small Orchestra was composed in April and May 1955 in Nice in the south of France. It was commissioned by the young Czech-Australian oboist Jiří Tancibudek, who at this time was beginning his international career. Martinů was glad to comply with the wish of his compatriot--a recent exile and, like him, a former member of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra--even though there was not much money for the piece. He wanted to help Tancibudek begin his new career and succeeded in doing so.
Martinů, who in the productive year 1955 completed such contrasting works as the folk cantata The Opening of the Wells, H 354, the sacred oratorio The Epic of Gilgamesh, H 351, and the neo-impressionistic orchestral Les Fresques de Piero della Francesa, H 352, managed to create in this concerto a masterful synthesis of the most varied expressive positions of his late period. Tancibudek premiered the work in Sydney in August 1956 with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt. Since that time, this concerto has become a standard repertoire item for oboists all over the world.
O. F. Korte, editor of the present collection, considers the slow movement of Martinů's Oboe Concerto to be "in and of itself, already upon first listening, one of the few gems not only of concerto literature but of all music literature. What all can be expressed in such a relatively modest space! A song of a distant homeland? A song of renunciation? The painful beauty of the relentless truth of life as well as reconciled repose? Moments of confession or of philosophical summations? Perhaps. Who knows? Did the composer himself know, when in his everyday hard work he spouted out one note after another? What is certain for us is only that this music touches our hearts, our conscious and unconscious minds, our experiences and our knowledge, with dozens of ungraspable touches, associations, and reminders. These marks on paper have been magically invested with an extract of personal and universal human life experience. The composer's self-portrait, too, or, if you wish, perfectly-characterizing 'snapshot', an imprint of the soul, has been indelibly breathed into this music. It radiates human genuineness, emotional depth, purity, simplicity, wisdom, and nobility."
Aleš Březina, Bohuslav Martinů: Selected Masterpieces, © 2001 Supraphon Music a.s