This record comes a year after the centenary of the birth of Leon Goossens, but is timely enough in celebration of a great musician. Though one of the most prolific recording artists in the days of 78s, he was overlooked when LP came along, and it was the issue of Mozart’s Concerto, with the youthful Colin Davis, on the comparatively minor World Record Club label in 1961 which reawoke some awareness that one of the country’s outstanding virtuosos was being neglected. It remains a beautiful performance, with Goossens on serene form and in complete command. He was not pleased to be told by some crass young company executive that if he now made a few lollipop records for them, they might be able to build his career up. It was almost too late. In 1962, just after recording the lovely performance of Bach’s Violin and Oboe Concerto with Menuhin, the two artists in what Menuhin calls “a genial and effortless communion”, Goossens suffered the car crash that smashed his lip and left him desolate and thinking he would never play again. (He asked me if I would appear for him as so-called expert witness in the lawsuit he brought; happily it was settled out of court, though I thereby missed the historic premiere of playing the oboe in the Old Bailey.)
He came back with immense courage, at first covertly in orchestral recording sessions amid much support from colleagues. He even made a few more solo records, though privately he said that things were not what they had been. In his early prime in the 1930s – when the old, blind Delius would listen enchanted to the oboe solos in Beecham broadcasts and Kreisler would say that his happiest musical moments were when Goossens played the solo in Brahms’s Concerto before his own entry – in these years he made many records, none more famous than that of Mozart’s Quartet. I think it survives wonderfully well. But I have to confess to the uncritical personal attachment most of us feel for the first records we ever bought.'