Soliloquies : Gonzalo X Ruiz

Gonzalo X Ruiz : Soliloquies.
Baroque oboist extraordinaire.

Gonzalo Ruiz explains: three works on this disc were composed for cello and the fourth for flute. The baroque oboe is not an instrument normally heard in an unaccompanied setting. I don't believe Bach ever envisioned that these particular pieces would be performed on oboe, although I like to think that he would approve. The truth is that I play them simply because I love them and have lived with them for many years.

When I first heard Johann Sebastian Bach's unaccompanied suites I practically had a crisis, fearing that I had picked the wrong instrument. My love for the oboe was shaken by the realization that there was nothing in its repertoire like these complete masterpieces for a single player, and suddenly my warmup routines seemed intolerably dry and boring next to those of cellists who started their day with a bracing round of Bach. It was years before I dared tackle an arrangement of one of them and then it was for strictly personal reasons. The suite became my main etude, my biggest challenge, and a constant companion that traveled everywhere in my instrument case. As the number of these arrangements grew, so did my abilities on the instrument. I found that working on them was the best way to prepare for the next concert, whatever repertoire it contained. I never thought I'd perform or record them, but over time I ceased to think of them as "music written for other instruments" and began to feel them simply as "music I enjoy playing".

Listeners familiar with these works will notice the ways in which I altered them to fit the oboe. These include the choice of key, some degree of octave transposition, and adapting or omitting many double stops, but in some cases they are simple esthetic choices. In measure 32 of the G minor Sarabande for instance, I suspect I am plausibly correcting a copyist's mistake in the surviving manuscript. In the repeat of measure 24 of the Sarabande of BWV1008 the F natural is not what Bach wrote but a beautiful alternative, and is dedicated to Anner Bylsma and Michael Marissen as my talisman against the risks involved in changing the text.

Songs:

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Release date: 9/24/2010
Gonzalo X Ruiz lives in California USA

Tagged as: Classical, Chamber Music, Baroque, Instrumental, Composer: Johann Sebastian Bach, Oboe

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