This edition of the Gioacchino Rossini: Variations for Oboe and Piano replaces the old Nova Edition NM394 and the subsequent but also now defunct EMA142. Both previous editions are now out of print. This is a freshly edited, updated and greatly improved edition.

Gioacchino Rossini: Variations for Oboe and Piano

Rossini was still a student at the Liceo Filarmonico in Bologna when he wrote these Variations at the age of 18. Originally thought to have been written for Clarinet in C and Orchestra, recent scholarship, culminating in Heinz Holliger’s brilliant recording (Philips 9500 564), has provided many good reasons why the oboe is clearly the solo instrument. Not only does it ‘look like’ oboe music but the writing (within the oboe’s exact range at that time) ignores more than an octave of the clarinet’s potential range. Also, it is most unusual to find the solo wind instrument duplicated in the accompanying orchestral parts, thus providing unnecessary competition in timbre.

Frédéric Chopin: Variations on a Theme by Rossini. No such ambiguity surrounds the origin of Chopin’s Variations on a Theme from Rossini’s opera La Cenerentola – orginally for flute. It is not definitely known for whom they were written, but they may have been either for his father (who played the flute), or for his close friend Matuszynski. They date from 1826-30 and here transposed from the original E major into D major for the oboe, provide a valuable addition to the oboist’s nineteenth century repertoire.