Antonio Pasculli – Opera Fantasies for Oboe & Orchestra

A Paganini of the oboe: The Sicilian Antonio Pasculli, today only known in oboe circles, enjoyed great fame in the 19th century as a virtuoso and composer. Christoph Hartmann, oboist in the Berlin Philharmonic, plays Pasculli’s adaptations of popular opera arias in which he pulls out all the virtuosic stops, from melancholic dreaminess to numbers of breathtaking, almost overwhelming speed and panache.