Cantabile Katsuya Watanabe & Arisa Kobayashi

• August de Boeck (1865 - 1937):
• 1 Boeck: Lied (Egge) 05:19
• Martin Grabert (1868 - 1951): Sonata G Minor Op. 52 (Lauren):
• 2 Grabert: Sonata G Minor Op. 52 (Lauren): I. Allegro moderato 05:17
• 3 Grabert: Sonata G Minor Op. 52 (Lauren): Ii. Adagio 06:27
• 4 Grabert: Sonata G Minor Op. 52 (Lauren): Iii. Allegretto 04:24
• Giovanni Bolzoni (1841 - 1919):
• 5 Bolzoni: Fantasia (R. Fantuzzi) 11:53
• Freinhold Glière (1875 - 1956): Pieces Op. 35:
• 6 Glière: Pieces Op. 35: I. Allegro 03:49
• 7 Glière: Pieces Op. 35: Ii. Adagio 04:42
• Robert Schumann (1810 - 1856):
• 8 Schumann: Adagio und Allegro 10:48
• Bill Douglas (b. 1944):
• 9 Douglas: Sonata - Trevco Music: I. Cantabile 04:49
• 10 Douglas: Sonata - Trevco Music: Ii. Expansive 05:24
• 11 Douglas: Sonata - Trevco Music: Iii. Singing, playful 03:37
• Total Runtime 01:06:29

Info for Cantabile

August de Boeck (1865-1937) was a Belgian composer and organist. He lived and died in the Flanders town of Merchtem.

Boeck initially studied the organ at the Royal Conservatoire in Brussels, passing his examination with distinction. He pursued further studies with the composer Hubert Ferdinand Kufferath in harmony, counterpoint and fugue, again graduating with distinction in 1889. From 1882 he was organist at various churches in his homeland. For over 10 years from 1909 he was Professor for Harmony at the Royal Flemish Conservatoire in Antwerp, later teaching at the Brussels Conservatoire. In due course he was appointed Director of the conservatory in his home town. As a com- poser, he belongs to the post-Roman- tic era, influenced by Richard Wagner and by composers such as Rimsky- Korsakov. The music of de Boeck is characterized by traditional harmony; he shunned the modern trends of his time, such as the twelve-note method of the Second Viennese School. Boeck’s chamber music with oboe is notable for its tender lyricism and pastoral atmosphere, as in the Lied for oboe and piano to be heard here. It is just as Hector Berlioz specified in his manual of instrumentation: “... Grace, unspoilt innocence, quiet joy and ... pain, the cantabile tones of the oboe can reproduce all this wonderfully.”

Katsuya Watanabe, oboe
Arisa Kobayashi, piano

Katsuya Watanabe
was born in Japan in 1966. He began learning the piano at the age of three and the oboe at thirteen. From 1985 to 1989 he studied at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, where he won first prize and the grand prix in the Oboe Competition in 1991. In 1988, whilst still studying, he became deputy solo oboist in the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra under Seiji Ozawa and remained in that post until 1992. He held the position of solo oboist first in the Wuppertal Symphony Orchestra from 1992 to 1996, then in Karlsruhe for a year and from 1997 to 2008 in the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper in Berlin. At present he is solo oboist in the Solistes Européens in Luxembourg and increasingly devotes himself to solo activities, giving frequent recitals and performing in concerts with the Philharmonic Orchestras in Bratislava and Zagreb, the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo and other ensembles. In 2011, he was chair of the jury at the very oboe competition where he had once won first prize. Katsuya Watanabe is visiting professor at the Senzoku Gakuen College of Music in Tokyo.

Booklet for Cantabile