Italian Oboe Concertos Vol.2
"Whether or not the oboe's your thing, this recording promises baroque/classical-period concerto fans a solid hour of pleasant listening. The exceptional quality of the opening G minor work by 18th-century composer Giovanni Platti rewards multiple hearings for its splendid, agile melodies, flowing rhythmic style, and, most of all, it's exquisitely lovely slow-movement solo lines. Oboist Anthony Camden, a soloist of vast experience and well-deserved acclaim, lavishes care and artful expression on this and all the other works on the program, enhancing even the less-illustrious works--the relatively routine if still agreeable Salieri and Rosetti pieces--with his facile technique and eloquent articulation. His tone is at once warm and tangy, very easy on the ear, and, as a singer with a text, he effectively alters its quality as the music suggests. Equal in interest to the Platti is the concerto by Carlo Besozzi (1738-c. 1798), a piece that offers the soloist some wonderful virtuoso challenges, highlighted by an exciting cadenza in the opening Allegro and fancy passagework in the concluding Allegretto. Camden is partnered by an excellent and responsive City of London Sinfonia, sympathetically directed by Nicholas Ward. The sound is appropriately full-bodied with a touch of brightness that serves the music and solo instrument well."
David Vernier - Classics Today, Jan. 2002


Albinoni
"Anthony Camden and Julia Girdwood produce liquid sounds from their modern instruments and are as meltingly expressive in the slow movements as they are light on their feet in the flanking ones."
Gramophone

"...an excellent recording that I recommend to every music lover."
Sunday Mail - Australia

"He [Anthony Camden] has a light, clear tone and presents the works in smooth, engaging manner."
Classic CD - May 1996

"...the performances are worth returning to, and Naxos's recording is splendid."
Fanfare - U.S.A., May/June 1996

"...some delectable pickings to be had, particularly among the slow movements... the complete set is hard to resist at super-bargain price."
Gramophone - Sept. 1996


Mozart
"...Camden performed last night with a dazzling technique and a beautiful sound. The Mozart was a revelation in breath control."
Washington Post - U.S.A.

"...Camden's tome was ravishingly beautiful with just the right amount of vibrato, some exquisite turns of phrasing and subtle graduations of tone."
The Courier Mail - Brisbane, 1990


Day of the 'Loud Wood'
"Very rarely... ...has the oboe been heard on the Manila concert stage as a solo instrument. Last Friday, Jan.12 we got a rare opportunity to hear Anthony Camden, the distinguished virtuoso oboist from London, as featured soloist in Mozart's Oboe Concerto in D in the fifth concert of the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra's 1989-90 season at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Mr. Camden's reputation in the UK was further enhanced by his flawless, superb performance Friday night. So it was with great joy that I saw Mr. Camden walk on stage for the oboe concerto last Friday night. The orchestra, now reduced to fewer strings, two oboes and two horns, following Mozart's favorite formula, gave ample support to Mr. Camden as he went through the intricacies of the concerto with graceful facility and clarity of tone. From low to high register the sounds issuing from his oboe were homogeneously warm and rounded. His well-articulated lines, hewing closely to the Mozartean feeling, showed an intimate knowledge of the style and intent of the composer. I also marvelled at Mr. Camden's breath control as he did long passages effortlessly while fully observing required dynamics. Mr. Camden's playing gave fulll meaning to the words of PPO conductor and musical director, Oscar Yatco whom I heard, some years back, advising the orchestra's oboist to be more assertive in his playing because the oboe "can be as important as the strings and rise on to become a prima donna of the orchestra." Prolonged applause by the audience made Mr. Camden come back for an encore: a short, modernistic work by Alun Hoddinott, Dreams of a Traveler, which was given its world premiere by Mr. Camden and the PPO that evening."
Arts & Leisure - The Philippines, 1990


Menuhin / Bach
"...some of the most beautiful oboe playing to have been heard in London for many years. The slow movement of the Bach Concerto was the highlight of the concert."
The Times - London


LSO / Oboist is man of the festival
"If music festivals had an award equivalent to cricket's man of the match, then in this year's Cardiff Festival, it would undoubtedly be oboist Anthony Camden. His various appearances over two weeks culminated in last night's London Symphony Orchestra concert at St. David's Hall."
Rian Evans

LSO / Abbado
"The LSO could hardly have chosen a more appropriate work with which to demonstrate its virtuosity under its principal conductor elect, combining Stravinskian qualities of sharpness with eighteenth-century elegance, not least in the important solos. Outstanding was Anthony Camden's oboe-playing in the Serenata, matching and even outshining the refinement of the tenor Ryland Davies. Teresa Berganza and John Shirley-Quirk were the other equally assured vocal soloists."
Edward Greenfield - The Guardian

A Symphony Orchestra that rocks the classics
"The London Symphony Orchestra and their energetic chairman and first oboe Anthony Camden look like qualifying for the Queen's Award to Industry. In the past week they have given three concerts at the Festival Hall and two evenings of CLASSIC ROCK conducted by well-known arranger Peter Knight at the Alert Hall. Next they fly off to show the flag with concerts in Germany and return to give Beethoven's Choral Syphony at Festival Hall on march 9. They're a dab hand at finding sponsorship too. £20,000 from Diners' Club makes the German trip possible and last Thursday's concert under Principal Conductor Claudio Abbado was supported by British Airways, and both that and Tuesday's were recorded for transmission by Capital Radio. Best of all they've been playing to full houses and playing superbly. Here is that rare and almost unfashionable thing - a success story."
The Music Man - Evening News, 1980

"We are unlikely this season to hear finer woodwind playing especially by the flute-oboe duo of Peter Lloyd and Anthony Camden, both of whom feature prominently in the excellent BBC2 TV series about the orchestra. The horns too, were quite superb, notably in the concerto."
Classical Music Magazine

"The orchestra's own board is headed by oboeist chairman Anthony Camden, a blue-eyed administrative powerhouse with a formidable reputation for business acumen (he happens to be a superb instrumentalist, too) and vice-chairman Kurt-Hans Goedicke, who has the reputation of being the world's leading timpanist."
New York Times

"Anthony Camden has promised to read this book in manuscript. He has agreed to correct the facts; the opinions are not his to correct. He reads it through and for some time will not discuss it. When he does, he tries to explain something that is hard for him to put into words: 'It may be fair,' he says reluctantly, 'but when I look around at my colleagues and when I think of the LSO - and I'm not talking about me but of them and of it - well, I have always thought and I do really think that it is much more exciting than it reads here.' It is the best tribute anyone or anything could have" to mean so much to those who are part of it. Camden is, in many ways, the central source of energy in the orchestra. He is the most forceful chairman so far in a history of characters. He has the distinction of having had more adjectives applied to him than almost any comparable figure in London's musical world: brilliant, mercurial. Brilliant certainly fits: he has the imagination and ingenuity of a fine oboist but he also understands this orchestra in his bones and fights for it like a tough and wily fox. Other London orchestra men at least pay lip service to wishing their competitors well. Camden simply never mentions any but the LSO. It is as if others do not exist. That he is not just a bright young man on the make is due to a side of him that outsiders often overlook: when he sits in the orchestra it is not as Mr. Chairman but as first oboe. It is the most exposed of positions; the oboe is at the very core of an orchestra, its soul at its most plaintive and honest The wrong kind of tension, a meanness of attack and all beauty will be lost. Camden is in the top handful of oboists in the world. The conjuring tricks by which he controls the LSO and keeps it running, must not come too close to that musical centre within. As always he has turned up just in time: how, when and where from is anyone's guess. Apart from anything else Anthony Camden is the only one who can really deal with Abbado. It works both ways, perhaps; Claudio asks for artistry and so with him there can be no pretence. No sleight of hand can save a phrase on the oboe."
Life of the L.S.O. - Linda Blandford


General
"...oboe playing of the highest level...,"
The Telegraph - London

Virtuosity at the 'Wigmore'
"...The trio were joined by Anthony Camden, oboe, in the well-known Oboe quartet in F, K.370 by Mozart and another by J.F. Fiala, in the same key. Anthony Camden's perfect intonation and phrasing together with his control of dynamics that one would not believe possible on his instrument, are achieved with an ease that inspires confidence even in the most taxing moments. At the same concert, he gave a brilliant performance of 'Moods' I for solo oboe by David Overton, a delightful piece with a Celtic flavour well suited to the plaintive tone of the instrument. This is a very well structured and musicianly work which, should soon become a standard inclusion in the oboe repertoire"
Margaret Campbell, The Strad