Woodwind at the Pah, with Camille Wells and Friends

Oboist Camille Wells leads her APO colleagues and much-loved pianist Sarah Watkins in a selection of chamber works guaranteed to charm and delight.

The program opens with a short but powerful world première by Ben Hoadley. Commissioned by Camille Wells and her student Shaiq Ahmad Noori in Afghanistan, ‘Invocation’ is inspired by a mournful Afghan love song.

In ‘Four Personalities’, American composer Alyssa Morris brilliantly and playfully creates musical depictions of personality types we all recognise. Which of your friends does each short movement bring to mind?

Corigliano composed ‘The Food of Love’ to celebrate the fiftieth wedding anniversary of his dear friends Michèle and Larry Corash. The Food of Love is a duet for oboe and cello which depicts the sweetness and strife of a marriage.

Relax into the gorgeous, tender melodies of Madeleine Dring’s ‘Trio for Flute, Oboe, and Piano’. Dring composed the ‘Trio for Flute, Oboe, and Piano’ (1968) for her husband Roger Lord, an oboist who played with the London Symphony Orchestra. Described as “somewhat of a monk and somewhat of a rascal”, Francis Poulenc wrote his cheeky, colourful ‘Trio for Oboe, Bassoon, and Piano’ in 1926. The work features a lyrical second movement which Poulenc described as “sweet and melancholic”, and ends with a joyful rondo that will send you home fizzing.

The Players
Camille Wells, oboe
Melanie Lançon, flute
Ingrid Hagan, bassoon
Chen Cao, cello
Sarah Watkins, piano

Read more about the musicians on our website.