1. - Originally published in the Winter edition 2010 of Double Reed News (BDRS)

A WONDERFUL YOUNG PLAYER

Geoffrey Bridge with Ramon Ortega Quero

after his recital in the LucasKirche, Luzern

August 26th 2010

I heard a wonderful oboe player in Lucerne a few weeks ago. The fantastic winner of the last oboe competition at the ARD Munich Competition in 2007 - aged 19 at the time. Ramon Ortega Quero his name. This was the first top prize they had given since Maurice Bourgue won in 1967! Nobody had been quite outstanding enough to give a 1st prize for all those years. But this guy got it. He is now - since March 2008 -  principal oboe in the Bavarian Radio Orchestra - one of Germany's finest orchestras, directed by Mariss Jansons.

I heard his recital at the Lucerne Festival at the end of August in which he was really amazing. A programme of baroque music with harpsichord. Such stamina, technical wizardry and sense of style in music of Chedeville, Blavet, Vivaldi and Bach.

His first solo CD will be on the shelves on October 16th 2010. It will be on the label Solo Musica, a German label   www.solomusica.de   and of course available at Amazon, and so on.

His second CD will be released in May 2011, at label Genuin, featuring German oboe concertos from the late baroque time.

We chatted after the concert about things oboe. He uses a Marigaux 901 oboe and also the latest M2 model which he describes as beautiful. He uses cane gouged at 57/58 mm with a Rigoutat -2 shape. A finished length of 71mm for a pitch of A=443. He makes a standard German style scrape on a profiler from Germany. He told me he hates too much in the spine and flattens it out. His reeds, incidentally he allowed me to examine closely, were beautifully crafted with very smooth finishes. Technically he uses quite a lot of "gonflez" of the cheeks to increase the resonance. He confided that Maurice Bourgue one of his teachers hated him using it!

We spoke about his start with the oboe at the age of eight in Granada where he was born. Most importantly Daniel Barenboim after selecting him for the West Eastern Divan Orchestra when he was only fifteen recommended that he go to Germany to study with Gregor Witt the principal oboist of the German State Opera Berlin orchestra where Barenboim is the Musical Director for Life.

The week after I had saw him he was back to South America - he had flown in from Brazil to play at Lucerne - to play three consecutive performances of the Strauss Oboe Concerto with the Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kees Bakels. It must have been an appreciative audience as he played three encores!  A movement from two of the Telemann unaccompanied Sonatas and a Ferling study!

The nice thing about this young chap is that he is gentle and completely modest. He is an inspiration.

No I'm not his agent! But an admirer of genius talent.

Geoffrey Bridge - August 2010