Oboe Concerto

The Concerto in A minor for Oboe and Strings was written by Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1943–44 for the oboist Léon Goossens, to whom the score is dedicated.

Vaughan Williams began work on the Oboe Concerto in 1943, immediately after completing the Fifth Symphony, with which it shares a great deal. Amongst other things, the concerto began as a revision of a scherzo movement originally intended for the symphony (Heffer 2000, 106). The concerto was to have been premiered at a Proms concert on 5 July 1944, but due to the threat of V1 rocket raids on London the Proms season was curtailed. The piece was first played in Liverpool instead, on 30 September 1944 in a concert by the Liverpool Philharmonic, conducted by Malcolm Sargent, that also included the Oboe Concerto by the soloist's brother, Eugène Goossens (Anon. 1944; Biggar 1997, 12).

This pastoral piece is divided into three movements:

The concerto has an element of cyclic form. Each movement begins and ends with the same pentatonic theme, spanning an octave (Mark 2013, 192). It is scored for a solo oboe and strings.