His visit and performances in the Philippines last January endeared him not only to music lovers but to musicians as well, particularly the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra with whom he did a concert at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, with Julian Quirit as conductor.

Mr. Camden has returned, courtesy of the British Council, to renew his friendship and continue his lifelong mission of making the oboe an important instrument on the concert stage, an effort in which he is making impressive progress.

Mr. Camden will be the soloist in the Manila Chamber Orchestra's concerts at the PCIBank on Dec. 13, 14 and 15.

His performances last January so dazzled music lovers and musicians that they have been eagerly waiting for his return.

..."I took up the oboe on the advice of someone that it would cure my asthma. I suffered a lot from asthma when I was young. My first instrument was the violin. But I switched to oboe and found that it could work wonders on my asthma. Playing the oboe makes one exert tremendous pressure to open the tube leading to the lungs. After six weeks, I felt better. Since then, I have been playing oboe.

"It's not easy being an oboist. You have to make your own reeds, since all of us have differently shaped mouths and lips. What may be an easy reed to play on will not necessarily be ideal for another oboe player.

"There's something about squeezing and pulling the sound from a woodwind instrument that makes the performer fully in control of the situation and leads to a very rewarding performance.

Incidentally, Mr. Camden is the first world-class oboist to give recitals in Dumaguete and Cebu.

We hope he will be followed by many more, so that musicians and music lovers there will have a chance to hear the great artists, whose performances are limited to Manila due to time and budget constraints.

The Strauss Concerto, which Mr. Camden will play with the MCO at the PCIBank, is one of the most difficult works written for the oboe.

The biggest problem for any oboist assigned to do the Concerto is breathing. From the opening third bar where he enters, the oboist is immediately confronted by one and a half pages of music, before he gets any chance to breathe. That means a good two minutes, during which he just has to find some other way or lose his wind.

"But it's the greatest oboe concerto to date. Very complicated and it's got some of the best music by Strauss, who incidentally did not write much. It also has some interesting solos for the viola, clarinet and French horn," he said.

These days, Mr. Camden is busy with the London Virtuosi, which take them to many places around the world.

...To date, there have been 10 oboe concertos written for and premiered by Mr. Camden. A new one is being done by an Australian composer. It will be for oboe and a string trio, to be premiered during his concert tour in Japan.

Almost 21 years to the day since he first played with the LSO, Anthony Camden is performing with the orchestra for the last time at Sunday's Prom.

Camden, not only one of London's most distinguished oboists but a keen musical administrator was chairman of the LSO for 12 years until last December, serving longer than any predecessor over a period of crisis and change. He has now been wooed away to become the new director of the Queensland Conservatorium of Music in Brisbane.

...He has no fewer than 35 concerto performances lined up for next season...

...Such energy takes your breath away. As Camden says in his cheerful, breezy manner: "If you are really busy, you can fit things in better." He will admit that he often has to take the phone off the hook to do his practising...

...For many years now he has been Visiting Professor of Oboe at the Guildhall School of Music, and early in his LSO chairmanship it was he who put together the idea of the Shell-LSO Award, combining the encouragememnt of youngsters with an annual tour by the orchestra outside London, which he had always wanted to promote.