The art of humility: an oboe between the public and eternity

By Marialuisa Veneziano

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Macerata, 6 February 2026

Albrecht Mayer, the Filarmonica Marchigiana and the Lauro Theatre of Macerata: a night when the humility of sound reminded man how human remains.

There are nights when music stops being an event and becomes a moral occurrence. Not something you listen to, but something about us. At the Lauro Rossi Theatre in Macerata happened exactly this: time slowed down, the noise of the world took a step back, and the beauty – the real one, which does not console but interrogates – took the word.

Albrecht Mayer came into the scene as the necessary things enter: without asking attention, but getting it all. First oboe of the Berliner Philharmoniker, yes, but above all the craftsman of the breath. His relationship with the public is not vertical, there is no chair or altar. There is a rare posture: the humility of those who know that music does not belong to him. He needs it. And Bach, more than anyone else, asks servants and not masters.

Bach is the great architect of the invisible. A man of Eisenach who built sound cathedrals without ever seeing them consecrated. Too complex, too deep, too necessary to be comfortable. Yet Mayer has chosen to dress him in play, lightness, that childhood seriousness which is the only way to access the sacred without stiffening it. Bach's music is not "interpreted": you cross.

The initial transcripts acted as a threshold. Not introductions, but preparations of the soul. The coral Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ BWV 639, in an arrangement for oboes of love and string orchestra, did something unheard: it made the prayer vulnerable. This choral, originally written by organ, was born as a meditation on the flowing time and waiting. Here, entrusted to the oboe of love – an instrument of the already philosophical name, as if love needed its own voice – has become a question without answer. Not a cry towards God, but a call in the void, entrusted to the hope that someone, somewhere, is listening.

A small anecdote that looks like a parable: Bach inserted this coral intoOrgelbüchlein, a collection also conceived as a teaching manual for his children. Teaching faith through art. Last night, in Macerata, that gesture repeated: Bach taught us how to ask, not what to ask.

With Erbarme dich, mein Gott from Matthäus-Passion BWV 244 entered an even more fragile area. This air comes after Peter's betrayal. It is the moment when man realizes that he is human. Mayer let the oboe become a voice that does not implore forgiveness from above, but seeks it inside. No emphasis, no easy tear. Only a melodic line that seemed to bend under the weight of compassion. Bach doesn't judge here. Understand. And at that moment, the whole theatre seemed to breathe in the same oboe palpit.

The Concerto per oboe d’amore in The Major BWV 1055R showed the other face of the Bachiano genius: the smiling, almost domestic one. Probable transcription of a lost concert, it is music that plays with intelligence without ever resisting it. Mayer confronted him with disarming naturalness, as if he was telling an ancient story around a table. The Marchigiana Philharmonic, attentive and participatory, has not accompanied: has dialogue. Here the orchestra was community, not car. An organism that listens while playing.

And then the jump. Not a tear, but a consequence. Beethoven.

Mayer, now director, has led the Eighth Symphony in Fa major op. 93 as you guide an ironic and lucid thought. The Ottava is often called "minor" only because it does not scream. It is actually a philosophical symphony disguised as a joke. Beethoven here looks at the world with an enchanted eye, almost smiling, but under the surface there is a fierce reflection on time, on progress, on the machine that advances (celebra the second movement, often read as a parody of the metronome). It's music you think.

The interpretation has avoided any unnecessary monumentality. Mayer chose clarity, essential gesture, confidence in the orchestra’s intelligence. The Marchigian Philharmonic, this time, responded more than ever with precision, energy and a sound full of life. Beethoven was not a marble hero, but a living, ironic man, at times mercilessly human.

And then the connection between Bach and Beethoven was revealed for what it is: not historical, but emotional. Bach is the root, Beethoven the branch that stretches towards the sky. Bach builds the order of the world, Beethoven questioned him. But they both leave from the same point: the urgency of saying something worth listening. Without Bach, Beethoven would not have had ground under his feet. Without Beethoven, Bach would risk remaining eternal but still. Like every real concert, this also needed a leave that was not a goodbye but a caress. The bis brought then scene "Let me cry" From Rinaldo by Georg Friedrich Händel, another giant of the Baroque, more theatrical than Bach, more exposed to human fragility. In this air simplicity is an ethical choice: few notes, a naked line, the pain that does not claim to be solved but only listened. Mayer chose to descend from the stage and play in the midst of the audience, canceling every symbolic distance: the oboe became a shared voice, collective confession. No satisfaction, no patheticism. The Marchigiana Philharmonic supported this gesture with a measured, breathed accompaniment, demonstrating a rare musical intelligence: knowing how to be there without occupying space. At that time, the music was not performed, but inhabited.

The Lauro Rossi Theatre, in all this, was not frame but condition. A necessary place for the beauty to happen. Because the beauty, without places that guard it, disperses. In that hall, last night, music reminded us that art does not serve to escape from the world, but to remain with greater awareness.

And when the last note turned off, there was no silence. There was respect. That is the highest form of listening.

Marialuisa Veneziano