List of Works || Intermissions for Flute and Oboe

Josef Marx, an oboist and friend of Weinzweig’s, commissioned Intermissions for Flute and Oboe. While Marx did not perform at the official premiere in 1949, he and a flutist did “premiere” the work in the King Edward’s Hotel on a Sunday morning, with Weinzweig conducting from the bed. The story goes that at first a small number of people at the hotel joined them to listen to the music; however, one by one they left, as the music did not suit their listening sensibilities.

The flute takes the lead in the first movement, “Playful,” introducing two main musical ideas: large leaps and chromatic scalar passages. The two players generally maintain rhythmic balance with one part playing a slower rhythm while the other plays fast sixteenth note passages, and vice versa. In a final build to the fortissimo ending, the two instruments rhythmically unite in a dissonant run to the finish. The flute sets the mood for the second movement, “Fervent,” with a soft, almost plaintive melody that focuses on major and minor thirds; fragments of this melody return throughout the movement, as Weinzweig modifies and extends it. The oboe reflects on one motive—A-B-G#-C—that returns sometimes without alteration and at other times as the opening of a longer meditation.

The third movement, “Graceful,” opens with a oboe melody that is shortly thereafter imitated by the flute. What begins as a perfect imitation of pitch and rhythm soon shifts to a rhythmic diminution and then a complete abandon of the original melody. Thus begins a series of call-and-responses, some following a more traditional imitative approach and others creating dialogic textures with divergent musical material. The two instruments finally join forces in a recurring homorhythmic gesture in the fourth movement, “Jocose.” The work ends with an accented perfect fourth interval (D# and G#), an interval which is emphasised throughout the work.

Written by Alexa Woloshyn