At last, LA Phil signs a principal oboe
NewsWe reported in June that Marc Lachat of the Basle Symphony and Zurich Chamber Orchestra had won the audition for the LA Phil.
Today, they confirmed he has accepted the problematic position, which has been vacant for the last four years.
Other newbies in Disney Hall are Kaelan Decman, associate principal bass; David Riccobono, assistant principal timpani/section percussion; and James Mason Soria, tuba.
This issue rears its ugly head once again. Does Dudamel plan on replacing the rest of the oboe section with players from the same style of oboe playing?
Does Berlin PO have American style oboists playing in their section? Obviously, no. And why is that? Because they honor THEIR tradition and value having the entire wind section unified in musical approach, not to mention the technical issues of pitch, vibrato, breathing.
What on earth are US music directors thinking brining in European oboists when it comes to honor OUR traditions? Simply toss them aside?
When you globalists begin to push for American style oboists joining European orchestras maybe then I’ll give you the time of day.
They are thinking that these European wind players are playing in an entirely different universe where expression and soloistic instinct actually exists.
Wind playing in USA is expressively anemic, so boring! And they want to protect it! Why?
Bravo to Yannick and Dudamel for encouraging positive, dynamic change.
Sometimes, too much expression can be a bad thing, in my opinion.
So do as 98% of American double reed players do and play everything with pallid vibrato and lack of conviction. Need to leave the audience wanting!
They used to play on wooden flutes with no vibrato in England and Germany, and fought till 1960s in some schools to keep that tradition. Finally, silver flutes with vibrato took over, because the players with that old tradition couldn’t get jobs any longer. The progress is unstoppable, a more expressive way of playing will win, and the American tradition has to evolve!! All European oboe traditions are not the same as 100 years ago, they have all changed. Only here the players are still insisting on making the reeds the same way as 100 years ago, and still have that ugly counted throat vibrato. That doesn’t work with modern orchestras. The message here is very clear for US oboe school – evolve or become obsolete. There are a few players in US oboe school who stand out, but those numbers are shrinking, something has to be done
One of the Berlin Phil’s principal oboists for nearly 20 years is the Englishman Jonathan Kelly, who definitely doesn’t play in a German style (and came from the CBSO). He’s a fine player, though I prefer Albrecht Meyer. Yet they manage.
Berlin Phil have Jonathan Kelly (British) in their oboe section and he’s different player than his fellow principal Albrecht Mayer or 3 other German style players.
But Mr. Kelly was and still is best player to them because he won audition, pass his trial and has a long career with them. And btw, even that BPO naturally wish that new (wind) player is a good match for them – BPO is still an orchestra by individual high level artists and each one has an own unique playing style.
And as an audience representive I don’t care f*** of that is the oboe player X American school player, European school player or Asian school player!!
I only care that:
– player have good technical skills
– is he/she a good match to section / team player
– can the player adapt his/her sound to blend with colleagues or changing playing style e.g. between Strauss and Tchaikovsky
– is he/she a truly musician/artist/personality who plays music and not just an oboe player – especially an oboe player with certain school style
I also only care that oboe player plays right tempo – not too fast or not too slow. I’m not particularry listening that “oh such a beautiful phrase with beautiful American/European style of playing”
As a native European I’ve never hear fanatism conciern with European oboe school style (e.g. in my country we have lot of Japanese oboe players in our orchestras and never problems) so especially American school representives: Please growing up now!!
The thing is, the European sound is simply too heavy for most American orchestras, it can be distracting
You’ll be surprised to know that many oboists in Europe use American reeds, especially when playing English Horn.
I’m sniffing an upcoming libel suit….
Obviously it was a few years ago, but props to the Chicago Symphony for hiring to arguably the most noticeable chair a great oboist who plays with a purely American sound, and not going the way of LA and Philadelphia
Yes, William Welter is fantastic!
That’s quite an accusation to make over a fully public forum. I hope you can back that up, factually, with evidence. It should dawn on you, that you could be leaving yourself open for a defamation of character lawsuit.
I hope he is only taking a sabbatical from Basle and Zurich to try things out, because his standard of living is going to drop dramatically living in LA.
However much more they are paying him at LA than his current salary, it’s not enough to compete with Hollywood pay to buy a good place at a good location in Southern California: the traffic, the wild fires, the heatwave, the traffic in the wild fires, the traffic in the heatwave, wait until his first evacuation from his home because of a wildfire and he’s living out of a suitcase in a hotel for 2 weeks, when the air is thick with smoke and smog and unbreathable and he’s sitting in the middle of traffic for the last 2 hours and still 2 hours away from Disney Hall.
Why does he think Dudamel is in Paris and lives in Spain?
No place drives the Europeans crazy like LA. A supercity the size of London but with much larger economic output (GBP of near a trillion dollars, compared with London’s closer to half-trillion) and more cultural and geopolitical force than all of Europe put together. Despite all the crazy problems. Yes if I lived in a modest European town I wouldn’t get it either, how this crazy city is eclipsing my entire continent.
I forgot to mention earthquake.
What God won’t burn down in this Sodom by the Sea, the earth will swallow up.
Unless he plans on living in the Malibu hills miles away, these worries of yours for him are nonexistent. Most likely he’ll be living right nearby in a condo in Glendale!
Hope that the LA Phil oboists (and the entire woodwind section) will figure out how to blend with M. Lachat’s sound (assuming it is representative of current French/European oboe playing – I have not heard him). I’m partial to the “American” oboe sound, currently represented by John Ferrillo (Boston), Elaine Douvas (Met), William Welter (Chicago), …
The LA Phil wind and brass section doesn’t seem to have a problem blending with the foreign principal flute, clarinet, horn and trombone players. I don’t see why this should be any different. Additionally, it is a good section player’s responsibility to be able to adapt to their principal. I would suspect the LA Phil players are capable of this, if they are willing to try.
People on both sides need to stop and realize that the audition process in America is completely broken. Orchestra committees are rarely on the same page, and often completely hate each other. The music director usually has a completely different oboe sound concept and look for that. There are plenty of American players who have amazing vibrato and DO play with conviction, you probably just haven’t heard them because they can’t get thru the broken audition process. Yes, there are plenty of players who just regurgitate whatever their teacher says for their entire career, but couldn’t you say that about players of any instrument, in any country?
What ends up happening 90% of the time at these big USA orchestra auditions, is all of the top conservatory teachers (Douvas, Ferrillo, Woodhams, etc) call their friends in the orchestra or the music director to push their star student ahead. Hopefully European orchestras would consider us as candidates if they are pro-globalization of the oboe sound. Heck, even if they just considered us for 2nd oboe (since we have pallid vibrato and lack of conviction that should be okay).