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Most oboists learn this D-minor concerto composed by Gustave Vogt (1781-1870) from the highly revised version found in Albert Andraud's Vade Mecum. There, the finale has been dropped, and the first and second movements reversed in order to produce a work more in keeping with the ideals of the yearly Concours held at the Paris Conservatoire. The house of Pleyel published the original concerto in 1812; Richault came out with Vogt's truncated version in 1880, entitling it Troisième Solo de Concert; and Andraud changed its title to 2nd Concertino in F.

Of Vogt's 18 oboe concertos, it would appear that several of those in manuscript were misattributed to the great oboist by his student Auguste Bruyant. This occurred when Bruyant presented Vogt's music collection to the Paris Conservatoire. As the Deuxième Concerto, an extraordinarily well-crafted work, is the fifth of Vogt's concertos, it does seem suspicious that he became so proficient so quickly, particularly since several of the concertos that follow it are really quite weak. But this work was published in his lifetime; now what can one say! I will be kind and say Vogt had a ghostwriter on this one, perhaps Rodolphe Kreutzer or Pierre Rode.

The work itself is a prime example of what I have termed French Romantic Concerto Style. Composers who worked in this medium were content to drop the development section, and all that follows it, from the initial movement. Therefore, after the orchestral ritornello (first exposition), the soloist enters with the two main themes and then caps them off with a series of closing themes; there is no more. The second movement is a short Sicilienne in the relative major. It is followed by an engaging Rondo which returns us to the tonic of D minor. Perhaps to make up for the lack of recapitulation in the first movement, Vogt includes the first theme of that movement at the initiation of the first couplet of the Rondo.

Gustave Vogt was the teacher of several of the 19th century's most-important French players including Apollon Barret, Henri Brod, Stanislas Verroust, Charles-Louis Triébert, and Charles Colin. His primary bases of operation were the Paris Opéra, the Paris Conservatoire, and the French Court beginning with Napoleon Bonaparte and lasting through Louis-Philippe.