[…] While Vienna’s string sections sounded unusually diverse, the winds were unusually unified. Flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons don’t normally sound much alike, but they do in Vienna. The oboe that takes the first variation in Schubert’s Andante was unlike any American oboe: smooth as well as fluent, lacking any sourness, it sounded like a cross between a recorder (the instrument popular in the Renaissance) and a clarinet. And the clarinet that takes the seduction scenes in Bartók, played by Matthias Schorn, was deeply echoing, as well as vividly expressive. […]
