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Georg Druschetzky (also know as Jiri Drusecki and Girogio Druschetzki) was an oboist and timpani player, composer, and publisher. Born in 1745 in Western Bohemia, he trained with one of the most famous oboists of the time, Alessandro Besozzi. After spending time as a military musician he began making appearances as one of Europe's only timpani virtuosi; he wrote many concerti for tympani, some for the unusual combination of eight tympani and oboe.

Around 1783 Druschetzky moved to Vienna where he entered the service of Count Anton Grassalovic in Pressburg in 1786, and then in 1794 took up a post with Cardinal Jozsef Batthyany on his country estate in Rechnitz.  In 1802 the composer moved to Buda where he died in 1819.

In addition to his works for tympani Druschetzky wrote operas, symphonies, and a good deal of chamber music for winds. He wrote at least seventeen quartets for oboe and strings, most of then unpublished. The second movement of the g minor oboe quartet includes variations on the letters B-A-C-H, and the composer wrote on the score "the name Bach executed in notes." He was one of the first composers to use this motif. Although all but unknown today, many of Druschetzky's works are full of wonderful melodies and fascinating sudden harmonic changes.

As Sir Donald Tovey, the well-known British musicologist has perceptively pointed out, Haydn and Mozart used the language of the classical style to project high comedy and brilliant wit while Beethoven sought a new dimension of tragedy and melodrama. Certainly the Op. 9 trios, for all their intelligence, do not betray the kind of deft epigrammatic wit that is such a hallmark of Haydn's work, but they exhibit extraordinary energy, propulsion, and drama.

Published in 1798, the Op. 9 trios are dedicated not to Beethoven's longtime supporter Prince Lichnowsky but to Count Johann Georg von Browne-Camus, a military figure of Irish descent who had served as an officer in the Russian army. The Count had moved to Vienna in 1795 and was very supportive of the young composer, who had already dedicated a set of twelve piano variations on a Russian theme to the Count's wife.

The opening material of Op. 9, No. 2 serves as something of an introduction, followed by the presentation of the main theme, a five-note turn that becomes predominant in the movement. The second theme provides contrast with a calm repeated-note viola accompaniment as the violin and cello sing a duet around the middle voice. The development explores the harmonic implications of the movement's opening gesture until the return of the five-note theme in the recapitulation.

The highly rhetorical second movement opens with a series of questioning chords. Once they have received their answer, the movement proceeds with a rapturous theme in the violin, answered by the cello in its highest register, and completed finally by the violin and viola in unison at the octave. After the opening chords return in a more dramatic version, a dropping arpeggiated motive comes to the fore, leading to a coda, which gently brings the movement to a close.

The Menuetto is full of slurs over the bar-line; its trio is minimal, a bare outline of a few progressions spelled out with as little effort as possible, the whole thing marked pianissimo. The main theme of the brilliant Rondo is presented each time by the cello in its high register and marked "solo" -- perhaps a trace of Beethoven's visit to Berlin where he heard the brilliant playing of Jean-Pierre Duport, a well-known cellist who owned the Duport Stradivarius, currently in the possession of Russian cellist Mstislav Rostopovitch.

Taneyev was an important Russian pianist, educator, and composer active at the turn of the twentieth century. Although he wrote a large quantity of keyboard, orchestral, vocal, and chamber music, he is known today primarily as the teacher of Scriabin, Tchaikovsky, and Gliere. As a young man, Taneyev made his first impact as a pianist, giving the first Russian performance of Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto, and, subsequently, the Russian premieres of all of Tchaikovsky's works for piano and orchestra.

Born into a well-to-do and aristocratically connected family, Taneyev had the best of educations. His most important teachers at the Moscow Conservatory were Tchaikovsky for composition and Nikolay Rubenstein for piano; Taneyev received gold medals in both areas at his graduation in 1875. After touring as a pianist for three years, he took a position in 1878 at the conservatory, becoming its Director in 1885. In 1905, he resumed his career as a pianist; his compositional activities now turned almost exclusively to chamber music. By the time of his death at the age of fifty-eight, Taneyev had left behind a substantial catalog of works, virtually none of which has entered the standard repertory.

The b minor String Trio, written in 1913, two years before Taneyev's death in 1915, was published in 1948. The Adaskin Trio has reconstructed the parts based on the score alone. The trio appears to be an incomplete work: the two movements suggest further complements; its unusual harmonic twists and detours suggest a genuine wit and a willingness to tease convention, if not fully subvert it.

Mozart composed his Oboe Quartet in 1781 while on a trip to Munich, where he worked with the Mannheim Court Orchestra, considered one of the best in Europe; Mozart's friend Freidrich Ramm, one of the few virtuoso oboe performers of the time, played in the orchestra. Unlike the oboe of today which is outfitted with all sorts of keys and mechanisms, the oboe of Mozart's time was very simple, having only a few keys. Freidrich Ramm must have been an astonishing player since even today this quartet is one of the most demanding works ever written for the instrument.

Mozart refashioned the traditional sonata form for the first movement. The Rococo-style exposition opens the Allegro with a light-hearted and sparkling theme presented by the oboe, after which the strings enter with imitative passages.  Following a rapid ascending scale, the first violin introduces the second theme, which turns out to be the first theme in a different key, scored differently, and with an oboe countermelody. The exposition concludes with a theme based on four repeated notes. The development seems to begin as a learned fugue, but the light-hearted mood returns with flashy passages for the individual players. Mozart defies tradition in the recapitulation, returning only the first theme from the exposition; following a coda, the movement ends quietly.

One critic describes the Adagio, only thirty-seven measures long, as a "poignant and soulful small-scale masterpiece." The movement is much like an operatic aria with the oboe as the singer in the leading role; it includes a brief cadenza.  Although short, the Adagio has an extraordinary emotional range.

The saucy main theme of the Rondeau restores the good humor of the quartet; the movement contains one of the first instances of polyrhythms, the strings performing in 6/8 meter while the oboe performs in 4/4 meter. The movement contains many florid and difficult passages for the oboe, passages that encompass the entire range of the instrument with frequent use of some of the highest pitches in its range. In the coda the oboe climbs to the very top of its range, concluding with three rising notes that echo the ending of the Adagio.

Some material in these Program Notes comes from Thomas Gallant, Thomas Berger, Robert Carl, Robert Mealy, and Steven Coburn.