Peter Child: Reviews: Sonatina for Oboe Composed 1985. APNM; CRI Excerpt from Oboist Pearson embodies her artThe Boston Globe, February 25, 1986 Peggy Pearson's recital program listed two classics of the oboe repertory and two pieces on which the ink is scarcely dry. Box-office poison, one might think, but Pearson more than filled the house because audiences have learned to value her work so much that they also trust her. Both new pieces were terrific. Peter Child wrote his solo "Sonatina" especially for Pearson, and the composer writes that he heard its slow movement with her special cantibile qualities in mind. And they were certainly there to hear in this long, sinuous, Mid-eastern-sounding melody. The other movements, an Invention on a Toccatina, were full of lightning-swift switches of volume, register and timbre, to which the first movement added instantaneous dislocations of rhythm. The idea was for Pearson to be playing a kind of two-part invention
on one basically monophonic instrument, and the effect was dazzling --
it was as if the music were a whizzing, highly charged dialogue, and,
in the composer's words, as if Pearson were an actor taking on both
roles.
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