- [Presenter] In partnership with the Curtis Institute of Music, WHYY presents the following program.

(elegant music) - My name is Mekhi Gladden.

I am a oboe student at Curtis.

It wasn't until I was almost halfway through Curtis that I really decided that I wanted to truly pursue this because I had sort of had my hand on the door most of the time just because even.

Because I got into it so late, I still was very worried about, you know, career opportunities in this field or still worried about how to support myself or even worried if this was really something I would want to spend the rest of my life doing.

Became more solidified this year with COVID when I realized just how much I miss playing with people.

I didn't really feel as happy if I wasn't playing music.

(solemn music) But I actually didn't really get involved with the oboe until my band director from middle school asked if anyone else wanted to try this instrument, the oboe, because they didn't have any oboists at the time.

And following that, I just sort of played clarinet and oboe together, and then I started picking up saxophone, playing in the jazz band.

And I just sort of did this woodwind doubling thing until about 10th grade when I was introduced to the talent development program.

(pensive music) And from then, they sort of guided me towards the path that I'm on now.

Because I had never played in orchestra.

I had never really played classical music.

It wasn't until I joined this program that I really saw classical music as something that I could do or really honestly understood what it was.

The oboe was sort of something that felt very different somehow.

The more I've sort of grown with it, the more I realize that it gave me a lot of potential to work towards something.

It was a really hard challenge, and the sound is just so different to me compared to almost any other instrument.

(melancholy music) The Telemann "Fantasy Number Eight in E minor," I would say, as a piece, it's broken into three movements.

The first one, which is sort of set up by these really big leaps that are really big intervals that create a lot of tension and drama throughout the piece.

And especially when it finally resolves at a cadence, it feels very, very, very potent after having these huge leaps throughout the entire piece.

(melancholy music) The second is in allegro and sort of a little bit more energizing.

(lively music) The last movement is sort of dance-like, and it has a really unique rhythmic pulse because you can't really tell if it's in 3/4 or 6/8.

And I sort of tried to play on that a little bit in my performance.

I hope it came across.

But it's, yeah, I would say the characters in the piece are very intense, and it's a really fun piece to play because there's just so much creativity you can have in something like that because it's presented so plainly on the paper that you can do almost anything.

And it's a really good place to showcase one's personal ideas or how they think about this music.

(jaunty music) I feel like I play two instruments when I talk about reeds because it's a whole separate process that.

It controls a large part of what we're able to do on the instrument playing-wise.

It takes hours to days to make one.

(laughs) So there's just a very, very long process where it starts as a tube of a reed, like a tube of wood, like similar to bamboo or something.

And you have to chop it in half.

You have to shave it down multiple times in multiple different ways.

We have expensive 1,000 dollar machines that refine it to within thinner than a human hair.

There's just a lot of really, really meticulous and painstaking work that goes into making sure it's precise.

Because the more precise it is, the better it will sound and the more it'll sort of work to what you want.

I think what makes it really special is that your sound does change depending on the reed you're playing.

A lot of instruments can't really have a completely different sound every day.

But based on the reed you play, you can almost change the way you sound.

Every now and then, I do get excited about making reeds, where there's something new I discovered, a new technique that I can try, and I will sort of experiment with that and sometimes get really, really amazing results.

There is a lot of potential there to create something really great, and I think there's something very personal about basically sculpting the instrument you play on.

(somber music) Telemann's "12th Fantasy in G minor" is, I would say, a little bit more dramatic, but in a way that's not as serious as the "Number Eight in E minor."

The piece is a lot longer.

I think it has a larger contrast of characters.

(vibrant music) Elizabeth Younan's piece, "Fantasia Number Five for Solo Oboe," and the piece really was testing the limits of the oboe especially.

It's supposed to be something very showy and virtuosic, which is something, but in a way that the oboe typically isn't asked to do.

A lot of oboe pieces tend to capitalize on the lyrical qualities of the instrument and don't really seek to enhance the sort of rhythmic qualities that the oboe can have, especially with its variety of articulation is something that's very unique to the oboe.

And she really capitalizes on that, especially using the different ranges of the instrument.

She was really seeking to sort of have two lines playing at once, almost make it sound like there's two instruments because of the different range jumps that happen throughout the piece.

And she really went for these really strong sweeping gestures, exploring the highest notes that I've ever played (laughs) on the oboe and utilizing the lowest ones right after to just capitalize on these unique aspects of the instrument.

It's also supposed to be basically a written-out accelerando for the entire piece.

So it starts off sort of fast, and the tempos change and the time signatures change.

And as the piece goes on, it just gets more energy and then it gets more energy and then it gets even more, and then by the end, you're just sort of tripping over yourself, and then you end with a final low B-flat that sort of encapsulates all of that energy and finishes it off.

(dynamic music) If I'm gonna talk about my decision to really stick with classical music, I would say that that would sort of directly tie into how to get more young people to play classical music because, in a way, I was one of those young people that was brought in (laughs) that probably wouldn't have, almost definitely wouldn't have pursued something like this unless I was actively sought out.

And I would say that that's really the key, is that we have to seek out young people and people who are interested in music or just anyone in general and bring it to them.

(lilting music)