Allan Vogel is the long-time regular oboist with the Oregon Bach Festival.
Allan Vogel is one of the country’s top oboists.Luckily for his listeners, he’s still as much in love with the instrument as he was as a junior in high school when he became obsessed with playing it. And fortunate for Oregonians, he’s a regular with the Oregon Bach Festival, in which he has participated for the past 30 years. This summer, he plays in almost every OBF concert, including Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, the Bach St. John Passion and the B Minor Mass, not to mention accompanying the Youth Choral Academy, performing Singet Dem Hernn. As a member of a group called Bach’s Circle, Vogel will play not only in Eugene this summer, but also in Ashland and Bend.
His credits spill out, an endless flow, and reviews of his work sparkle with praise. He has performed as guest principal oboist with the Boston Symphony for concerts in the major European capitals, Carnegie Hall and Kennedy Center. He’s been featured at numerous American music festivals, including ones in Aspen, Sarasota, Santa Fe and Portland with Chamber Music Northwest. He is a founding faculty member of California Institute for the Arts in Valencia, serves on the faculty of the Colburn School, Conservatory of Music, and has served as adjunct professor of winds and percussion at University of South California. He is an advisory board member for the American Bach Society. Vogel has made myriad well-received recordings on such labels as Nonesuch, Dorian, RCA and Deutsche Grammophon. Also, he joined the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in 1973 under the baton of Neville Marriner, and is principal oboist.
During a phone conversation from his home in Newhall, Calif., Oregon Music News asked him about his career, the rehearsal process, composers and more.
Tell us a bit about your early years, and how you got into your career.
Allan Vogel
I grew up in New York City. I was born in Brooklyn, and grew up in the Bronx. My father was from Vienna, so he was musical, and my mother was musically sensitive. Music was always on in the house. I started piano lessons when I was about six, and I played all through high school. My brother Stanley, seven years older than me, became a jazz musician, a bass player, and I started listening to jazz too. I had two or three piano teachers in the neighborhood, and then in high school I got into the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan: It’s now called Laguardia High School, near Lincoln Center. At that time, it was in Harlem. I remember playing piano at school assemblies, tunes from “Oklahoma,” stuff like that. It was a hard school to get into. I had to take an exam.
When you entered the school, they asked you if you wanted to study instrument or voice. Most of the musicians came in on the piano, but the rule was if you said “instrument” they would choose one for you. When they asked me that question, somebody walked by with a tuba, so I said “voice.” I was a voice major there for two years; I started studying singing at about 14. The school was like the one in “Fame,” only much better. One day I walked in on an assembly, and heard students playing Bach’s Cantata 140, which has three oboes in it, and I fell head over heels in love with the oboe–just at the time my parents bought me this new piano!
Did you think of a career as an oboist at that time?
The instrument
I got the feeling that being a musician was kind of wild. Then I remember at 15 running into the teacher who had auditioned me for the school. She was waiting for a bus, and we got into a conversation, and she said, “You know, being a musician is a perfectly respectable thing to do.” I remember hearing that and thinking, “Hey, yeah!”
I became obsessed with the oboe, and eventually I started studying it, maybe at the beginning of my junior year. Right away, I got into the All City Orchestra of NYC. I wasn’t that good a student in grade school, but suddenly I was this good student. I was amazed at how high my grades were when I got my report card.Because I had all this musical training–piano, singing–the oboe went very fast. Of course, it didn’t seem so at the time.
I got into Harvard, to my surprise. Probably because I had good grades and played the oboe. I was an English major and didn’t actually decide to be a musician until my senior year. I graduated with honors in English, and was even considering graduate school. At that time I was co-winner of the Harvard Concerto Competition with Robert Levin (of the Sarasota Music Festival). I also won a Fulbright. So those two awards made me think that maybe I should be an oboe player after all. It took me a long time to say I as an oboe player, but all this whole time I was practicing.
Who were some of your teachers?
During my Harvard years I studied with the second oboist of the Boston Symphony, Jean de Vergie. In high school I had two great teachers, Anton Maile and Josef Marx. Josef Marx
Fernand Gillet
treated his pupils in such an unusual way. After the lesson he would always walk you out of the apartment and wait for you at the elevator. We always called him by his first name. His respect for his students stays with me.
When Jean de Vergie retired to go to Florida, someone said to try Fernand Gillet, former principal at the Boston Symphony, who had retired at age 83. I went to study with him, and that’s what changed my life. He’d been a fighter pilot during World War I, and he wrote his etude books while on leave. He was twinkly-eyed and very energetic. He said, “I’m here to teach you how to practice, not how to play. Practice is an art in itself. Practicing is a way of life.”
When I got the Fulbright, I went to study in Germany with Lothar Koch, then principal oboist with the Berlin Philharmonic. I got to play with that orchestra when I was like 22. He was crazy to put me in there. He shouldn’t have done it. I could tell you some hair-raising stories, like the time I messed up a recording session. Koch was fantastic, and he treated me so beautifully. I wanted to stay in Berlin, but it was during the Vietnam war, and I would have been drafted it I’d chosen to stay. So I went to the Yale School of Music, where I encountered an incredible teacher, Robert Bloom. He had played under Toscanini, was sort of the dean of American oboists, and a great artist.
I made up for starting a little late. I had 10 years of great training.
Your teaching jobs?
I got the job at California Institute for the Arts when I was still in graduate school, and I’ve been there 43 years or so now. Then I started teaching at USC, and most recently at the
The Valencia Trio: Jack Sanders, Allan Vogel, Janice Tipton
Colburn School, where everyone gets free tuition and room and board; so it’s very elite. But so is Cal Arts in its own way. Colburn emphasizes contemporary music and a basic kind of free spirit, and USC’s just a normal, great school.
I married my student (flutist Janice Tipton), and we’ve been married for over 30 years, and we play together a lot. We play in Eugene in the group Bach’s circle. We’ve recorded together.
Why do you keep coming back to the Bach Festival? You’re obviously an integral part of the event and have been for quite some time.
There are so many reasons to like it. The first thing is, the more Bach the better. And I personally think there should be more Bach (in general). And then, Helmuth Rilling, (the long-time festival director to be replaced by Matthew Halls at the end of the 2013 season). Rilling is one of the world’s great musicians, and it’s been a privilege to know him all these years. I also like the work of Matthew Hall, whom I don’t know yet but I’ve heard his recordings, and he’s an amazing musician.
This might not be a fair question to ask, but do you have a favorite composer? Can we ask you that?
Definitely. My favorite composer without question is Bach. Let’s face it, he was far and away the greatest composer. It’s my opinion, but one I share with people like Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms and Schumann. all those guys would agree with me. My only regret is that being older, I don’t have so much time to spend with Bach. Something he wrote in, say, a day, or two days, you can listen to your whole life, and it just gets better and better.
Watch Vogel teaching. During the 2011 Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival, presented by Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, oboist Allan Vogel gave a master class to students of Neil Tatman, Associate Professor of Music at the University of Arizona.
Click here to view the embedded video.
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