This is an extraordinary and fascinating collection of music for a number of different kinds of instruments that, being conical and played with a double reed, fall under the general description of oboe. It is not, of course, comprehensive. For instance, Robin Canter does not try to play the Indian shahna or shehnai, of which the greatest exponent is perhaps Bismillah Khan (I once heard him playing throughout much of the night at a festival in Shiraz, and was dumbfounded at his virtuosity: there is an EMI record of him on ASD2446—now deleted). But he ranges wide and with breathtaking skill from traditional instruments through baroque times to the present day. I am in no way qualified to comment on his performances on some of the earlier instruments. I can only record fascination at his playing of a wild, ferocious Alborada on a Spanish dulziana, or his gentler Japanese piece played on a hichiriki with temple drum and bell. The performance on the Turkish zurna ought to have stopped a crusade in its tracks. There is a charming Breton piece, played on a bombarde, and a piece for treble shawm before we move into rather more familiar territory with Marin Marais, C. P. E. Bach and others.
The whole record is an absorbing survey of some different kinds of oboe for anyone who is interested either in the instrument or in the various musical traditions on which it touches. Robin Canter plays with stunning virtuosity on them all, so far as I can tell; and he is brilliantly backed up especially by Melvyn Tan and Richard Burnett, founder of the Finchcocks museum where this was made. Problems of balance must have been appaling: they have been fairly solved.'