Editorial Board member Peter Bloom submitted this very amusing story about Marcel Tabuteau originating from their mutual friend, Sol Schoenbach. Peter recounts:
Until I came to Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1970, to teach at Smith College, most of my life was spent in Philadelphia. My mother was a professional artist, and had among her closest friends two other professional artists, Leona Braverman, married to Gabriel Braverman, violist in the Philadelphia Orchestra, and Bertha Schoenbach, married to Sol Schoenbach, principal bassoon in the Philadelphia Orchestra. We saw the Bravermans and the Schoenbachs on regular occasion. That is how I came to understand the trials and tribulations of becoming a professional musician and to appreciate the excellence of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Sol Schoenbach left the Philadelphia Orchestra to become the Director of the Settlement Music School in Philadelphia. He was not only a very fine musician, he was a great spokesman for the cause of classical music—and a terrific raconteur. It is Sol who, hearing me play the recorder as a little boy, told me to play a “real” instrument, set me up with an oboe and a teacher, and eventually helped me to study with John de Lancie, first privately, then at the Curtis Institute of Music.
Sol told lots of droll stories about life in the Philadelphia Orchestra, including some about his senior colleague, Marcel Tabuteau, whom Sol regarded with awe and respect. For instance:
As is well known, Tabuteau would return regularly to France to see his family but also to see the makers of the Lorée oboe, which for my generation of oboists was overwhelmingly the instrument of choice. Wanting to return home to the United States with two new Lorée instruments, but wishing to avoid any and all possible import duties, Tabuteau (according to Sol) taped those two new instruments to his left leg, and walked through customs at the airport limping, and with a very stiff leg. Apparently no one noticed anything, and Tabuteau was home free.
Here is another Tabuteau story related by Sol:
One of the orchestral excerpts on this website comes from the recording of Schubert’s Great C-Major Symphony that Arturo Toscanini made with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1941. The second movement, marked Andante con moto, in 2/4 time, is a stylized march, in the key of A Minor. After a seven-bar introduction in the strings, the solo oboe plays the principal theme, which stretches over the next seven bars with a two-bar transition back to the main theme. At that point, the solo oboe is joined by the solo clarinet, and in unison, they begin to repeat the theme. Then, on the last note of the second bar, Schubert adds a trill. Most conductors ask that the trill be played “straight,” without an added two-note termination (or Nachschlag), thus making it an immobile ornament that does not assist the upbeat function leading to the downbeat. Sitting in the chair of the principal oboe, Marcel Tabuteau, to whom upbeats were the breath of life, played it with the Nachschlag, but Toscanini insisted: no Nachschlag! Tabuteau was not happy and balked at that idea. Sol Schoenbach, my boyhood musical mentor, who was sitting behind Tabuteau in the principal bassoon chair, told me this story.
If you listen to the orchestral excerpt on this website (https://marceltabuteau.com/recordings/orchestral-excerpts/#schubert9), you will hear who won this little battle of wits!
I have always been grateful to Sol Schoenbach for helping me to enter the musical world. As director of the Settlement Music School, Sol on one occasion in the 1960s brought Marcel Tabuteau to the building on Queen Street, in South Philadelphia, to take over the wind class that he, Sol, would usually direct. I remember enjoying being coached by this charming fellow with a French accent, but I also remember being very frightened in the presence of the great man.
I heard a great deal about Tabuteau from John de Lancie, my brilliant teacher, who admired Tabuteau without limit. On one occasion, when I found the courage to tell Mr. de Lancie that I thought that he was the finest oboist there ever was (by that time I was a full professor at Smith College), he said “thank you, my boy, but you should have heard Tabuteau in his prime. He was the greatest of all.”