Hi guys! Guess what? I am getting for my very first concerto competition for my youth orchestra and am totally excited! I am currently trying to find a good, solid concerto for oboe that sounds good, is challenging but not extremely hard, and reflects my style and interpretation of the music.

To give you a background description, I have played oboe 2 years. Pieces I have recently studied are Camille Saint-Saens Sonata for Oboe and Piano , and Francis Poulenc's Sonata for Oboe . Both of these are the type of style I enjoy playing on the oboe. My oboe's a wooden Loree F series. (Don't know if this matters.)

For the first round of the competition, the music must be recorded. The second round requires the memorization of the music. Between now and the first round, I have 11 weeks. Hence, I need something that is possible to learn in this amount of time.

So, to sum things up, what are some major concertos for this instrument? What are some that are not so famous but still good pieces? Any help would be appreciated.

The Vaughan Williams concerto maybe? I have never played it before, but it is kind of in the same style as the saint-saens sonata. It has some technical stuff, and also some parts that are very expressive. It isn't as well known as some concertos, I guess, but it looks and sounds very interesting. I may have to try it sometime!

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Here is a website that has the concerto for sale and also has a page of it that you can look at:

http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/Concerto-For-Oboe-And-String-Orchestra/3617593

Thanks a ton! It sounds awesome.

I would also recommend the Concerto by Strauss. Difficult but rewarding and very fun!

Isn't the Strauss Concerto supposed to be one of the most difficult?

Hummel's theme and variations is about the standard of your other two pieces you mentioned and is for full orchestra
has a great tune and is great fun
please inform me how it went if you go ahead with my choice which i played with my youth orchestra 2 weeks ago

Marcello and Cimarosa are nice concertos to start with. They are a little more baroque though. A beautiful modern piece with orchestra is Wayne Barrlow's "A winters past".

I am mad for the Vaughan Williams. Can't stop listening to it. Sadly I'm not a performer myself, but I have ordered the score (two parts: piano accompaniment arrangement, oboe) for the pleasure of following along.

I really like the Marcello Oboe Concerto and the Mozart Oboe Concerto personally. I am working on both of them and I really enjoy playing them. Good luck on your concerto

The Mozart concerto will always be my favorite, but I really like the Marcello too. Another one to think about would be the Haydn--similar in style and difficulty to the Mozart.