After we had talked about an hour about the brightness and joyfulness of the piece, the upper-register challenges, the complicated fingerings–English-horn keys are a bit clunky compared with the oboe, Cally told me–and other musical matters, I got to the question of reeds. For all the stuff she needs to do in this concerto, what must her reed be like for these concerts?
Cally sighed the sigh of the double-reed tribe. Then said, “It needs to be spectacular…. It needs to be a really hot piece of cane.”
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