Jean Claude Malgoire began his musical studies in his native Avignon. At the Paris Conservatoire he took first prizes in oboe and in chamber music, embarking on a brilliant career as an instrumentalist at the age of twenty, crowned by the first prize in 1968 in the Geneva International Competition. His interest in contemporary music brought a recording of music by Holliger, Castiglioni and Shinohara and in 1972 Bruno Maderna chose him as a principal in the Ensemble Européen de Musique contemporaine. He was subsquently appointed by Charles Munch as cor anglais soloist in the Orchestre de Paris. At the same time he developed his interests as a conductor and musicologist, with his first opera recordings in 1975 paving the way for engagement...