WESTLAKE | Spirit of the Wild | Callum Hogan soloist

Callum Hogan performance Nigel Westlake's 2016 Oboe Concerto, 'Spirit of the Wild'. Recorded live at Sydney Lower Town Hall on 22 December 2021 with the composer in the audience.
Ensemble Apex conducted by Sam Weller
This recording was made possible by the generous support of Create NSW and the City of Sydney.
Nigel Westlake, in his oboe concerto, Spirit of the Wild, asks us to pause for a moment, observe a patchwork of nature in its purest state.
Westlake’s journey to Tasmania’s Bathurst Harbour, an almost untouched area of protected land in the state’s south-west, formed the underlying inspiration of this composition. While the mystic of this isolated region is conveyed through myriad percussion, and an orchestra characterised by lightness, it’s the jagged cliff faces and wild rivers that undermine the work - an essence of energy, spontaneity and persistent evolution. The oboe and its sonic backdrop, with their coursing intensity and rhythmic unpredictability, are not always welcoming - vessels of uncivilised wilderness. Consumed by materialism, our connection to country is slipping away: nature grows more alien.
Composed for oboist Diana Doherty, Westlake shaped his composition around a session of her improvisations, resulting in a work whose touch of the wild stems as much from a sense of spontaneous musical intuition as it does its unique soundscape of instrumental colour. The oboe, the sole woodwind of the ensemble, embodies a sense of animal energy, at first warm, then unflinchingly virtuosic; primal in its multiphonic calls, and shimmering at the peak of its most rapid passages.
Performed as a continuum, the work is in four distinct sections. The first two, great waves of momentum, fall to stillness in the third, as sustained oboe phrases float over an orchestra that grows in darkness. The finish, a great burst of movement, presents the oboe as a bird-like entity, agile and exhilarating. We are offered glimpses of wild beauty, but not without a reminder of the threat that shadows in the unknown.
Words by Paige Gullifer

[@cellistry]

Excellent performance, both oboist and orchestra, of a virtuosic piece.

[@jacquesboes7042]

Very strong performance of the Westlake's concerto Spirit of the wild .i like it a lot.you have à very powerful instrument. What is thé brand of this oboe please.

[@extremeflext]

amazing recording - so fun to compare your playing to the diana doherty recording. so much to love in both!!

[@Luciusoboe]

Fantastic

[@adrien1375]

0:22 1st mvt: [crotchet = 96] - Cadenza
4:43 2d mvt: [crotchet = 96]
10:06 3d mvt: Tranquillo
16:57 4th mvt: Agitato

[@jacquesboes7042]

Hi
On what brand of oboe are you playing please