CD review – Vaughan Williams and MacMillan oboe concertos (FT)

Nicholas Daniel makes the most of the virtuoso opportunities of the Scottish composer’s concerto

MacMillan, Vaughan Williams oboe concertos / Nicholas Daniel / Harmonia Mundi 

Oboists may feel ruefully that the musical world owes them a showpiece. They have one now: James MacMillan’s Oboe Concerto turns the soloist into a nimble-footed musical athlete, a star opera singer, a dazzling Highland dancer, all in the space of three varies movements.

Nicholas Daniel makes the most of its virtuoso opportunities, raising the elegiac slow movement to intense heights.

MacMillan conducts the Britten Sinfonia himself, also partnering Daniel in Vaughan Williams’s Oboe Concerto and adding Britten’s Suite on English Folk Tunes, Op.90, for good measure.

David Honigmann, FT, April 2015

Read the review online (pay per view)