Christopher Redgate Contemporary Oboe Music Specialist
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CDs now available....
The following CDs can be purchased directly from me, from the manufactures listed below, from CD baby.com or from a numner of download e-music suppliers such as iTunes. A number of the reviews quoted below can be seen in full on my 'reviews page'.
 
 
oboe+: berio and beyond...
 
Oboe+ :Berio and Beyond is a cutting edge contemporary classical music album. This is the most technically challenging oboe music around. The music pushes the oboe to its absolute limits!

The performers are:
 
Christopher Redgate - oboe and oboe d'amore
Julian Warburton - percussion
Roger Redgate - violin
 
 
 
 
Supporting materials:
The oboeclassics.com website contains an article on listening to contemporary music. A second article was written for the British Double Reed magazine. All of this material has been translated into German and published in Rohrblatt.
 
 
Available from me or from:

Oboe Classics.com - where you can also hear clips from the CD.
From CD Baby  - where you can also hear clips of the music

It can be downloaded from:
 iTunes
emusic
Napstar
 
 
The Music:

'...sting of the bee...' Improvisation - Christopher Redgate
Ausgangspunkte - Roger Redgate
Argrophylax - Michael Young 
Pavasiya - Michael Finnissy 
Recoil - Sam Hayden
Sequenza VII - Luciano Berio  
 
Recent press reviews:

"What better choice than Christopher Redgate to present a selection of contemporary British works....Each work receives performances which are both technical feats of virtuosity as well as the products of a virtuosic imagination. Interestingly, listening to Sequenza VII after the other works, which push the oboe beyond the extremities of register and technique, reveals new perspectives on the work – never have I experienced such a tender reading of the work, particularly during the final section in which the multiphonics stand so elegantly poised."
SPNM on-line review. Philip Thomas.

"This extraordinary disc from the oboe fanatic's label is a showcase for multiphonics, triple tonguing, flutter tonguing and circular breathing. But while the sounds and their production are compelling, this is intensely meaningful virtuosity. Although primarily an interpreter, Redgate improvises on "Le Api" ("The Bees") by 19th century oboist Antonino Pasculli, blasting through a compendium of extended techniques like a free jazz wildman...Forget the instrument's bucolic image, this is a great recording of new music."
Andy Hamilton: The Wire

"Christopher Redgate is a tireless champion of music that embraces extended oboe techniques...throughout Christopher Redgate gives everything, not only in terms of his commitment, but also in his undying energy."
Melinda Maxwell: Double Reed News

The British oboist and composer Edwin Roxburgh has said: "It's not simply your virtuosity which amazes me, it is the sensitivity of your artistry, especially in Roger's piece and the Berio. There is no question in my mind that yours (without exception) is the finest recording of the Sequenza and the finest performance. As for your piece, the question arises - why have you not composed more music? Perhaps you have a secret horde. If so, we should hear it. This is the finest possible tribute to your playing and to the composers you have served with such integrity.

 

 Pasculli -
The Paganini of the Oboe
 
 
The Performers are:
 
Christopher Redgate - Oboe
Stephen Robbings - Piano
 
Suporting Materials:
The Oboe Classics website also includes an article that I have written about learning the music of Pasculli .  


This CD is available from me or from:

Oboe Classics.com - where you can also hear clips from the CD.
Or from CD baby - where you can also hear clips of the music

It can be downloaded from:
 iTunes
emusic
classical.com
Napstar
The Music:
All works by Pasculli:

Characteristic Study - Le Api (The Bees)
Grand Concerto on themes from I Vespri Siciliani by Verdi
Fantasia on themes from Les Huguenots by Meyerbeer
Concerto on themes from La Favorita by Donizetti
Fantasia on themes from Poliuto by Donizetti
 
Press Reviews:
 
"This is a disc to open the ears of all oboists, and to entertain and astonish less specialist music-lovers."  Anthony Burton, BBC Music Magazine

"The enterprising new label Oboe Classics maintains its highest standards with a sample of the fiendishly difficult music written by Antonino Pasculli, the 19th-century composer-performer
 known as the 'Paganini of the Oboe'. Christopher Redgate needs all his considerable virtuosity  to negotiate the fiendish challenges set by Pasculli on themes from Verdi, Meyerbeer and Donizetti, not to mention the 'characteristic study' Le Api (The Bees). This is fascinating music played with extreme panache." Anthony Holden, Observer

"Christopher Redgate is an oboist who thrives on technical demands, the more extreme the better, and his disc is a remarkable tour de force." Christopher Hooker, Double Reed News

"This is an incredible CD for everyone who enjoys brilliant performers and performances." Gary Higginson, Classical Music Web
 
Michael Finnissy - Lost Lands
 
As well as some ensemble music the CD includes many of Michael Finnissy's works for oboe.

   
The performers are:
 
Christopher Redgate - oboe and oboe d'amore
Julian Warburton - percussion
Ian Pace - piano
Members of Topology
 
 
 
The CD is available from me or from:
 
Divine Art /Metier
CD Baby - where you can also hear clips of the music
 

The Music:
The oboe music on the CD is:

Runnin’ Wild (solo oboe)
Moon’s Goin’ Down (solo oboe)
Dilok (oboe and Percussion)
Delal (oboe and Percussion)

Press Reviews:
 
"Virtuosic and explosive music, with a frame of reference from jazz to Kurdistan, which proves itself fully engaged with the world Pianist lan Pace, who was the star of last year's double-CD Finnissy album from METIER (4/02), takes a back seat in this latest addition to the series. It is as well recorded as ever, and offers a substantial and memorable pro gramme. This time it's Christopher Redgate, oboist in Pace's Topologies ensemble, who is featured, and Redgate's phenomenal breath and finger control is heard to startling effect in two solo pieces whose titles - Moon goin' down and Runnin' wild evoke jazz standards, while steering well clear of the clichés often found in more explicit 'crossover' music." 
Arnold Whittall   The Gramophone

"This invaluable disk in Metier’s Finnissy series focuses on woodwind instruments, notably the Oboe, or, to be more precise, the Oboe as molded, manipulated and cajoled by Christopher Redgate.  All seven pieces take as their starting point aspects of musical cultures that Finnissy views as being threatened in some way.  This is not too hard to grasp in the Azerbaijani echoes of Keroiylu of the Arabic inspired trilogy of the Dilok,Delal, and Kulamen Dilan, the first two of which find Redgate's open throated sound wonderfully evocative of the middle eastern antecedents of the Oboe, with succinct percussion support from Julian Warburton.  By contrast, it takes Finnissy's insistence that jazz is ‘an emotional state rather than a harmonic/rhythmic proscription’ to unlock the more elusive notion that the freewheeling fantasias of moons going down and running wild are blues  inspired."
Christopher Dingle  BBC Music Magazine
 
 

 

Plot in Fiction
This CD includes Luca Francesconi's  - Plot in Fiction for oboe/ coranglais and ensemble
 
The performers are:
 
Christopher Redgate - Oboe /Cor anglais

Barrie Webb - Conductor
Firebird Ensemble

 
The recording is available direcr from me or from:
Divine Art/Metier
 
The Music:
Luca Francesconi  - Plot in Fiction
 
Press Review:
"It (Plot in Fiction) has a solo part of stamina-sapping virtuosity, admirably played by Christopher Redgate." Christopher Thomas - Web Review