Sitting next to the flutes on the front row of the woodwind section, the oboe is actually made of wood. The name ‘oboe’ came from the French ‘hautbois’, literally ‘high wood’, as it was known in the 17th century.

The sound of the oboe is produced by blowing into a reed in the top of the instrument – which means that oboists have to master not only the art of playing the instrument, but also carving the delicate reeds to suit their own mouths. The oboe’s sound is very pure and easily heard – you’ll spot the oboe easily right at the start of concerts as they will play the A to which the rest of the orchestra tunes.

Usually there will be two or three oboes in the orchestra, frequently joined by its cousin the Cor Anglais (English horn – which is neither English, nor a horn…) and sometimes by rarer relatives such as the Oboe d’Amore, bass oboe and Heckelphone.

• The oboe is pitched in the key of C, with a range of two and a half octaves • The modern oboe is most commonly made from grenadilla, also known as African Blackwood • Oboists often get teased that their instrument sounds like a duck – Prokofiev even used the instrument to represent the duck in Peter and the Wolf • The fastest oboe player in the world, Jack Cozen Harel, played Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumble Bee in 26.1 Seconds