“Summer Song Op. 26 for oboe and piano was written 1988 in Vienna, and premiered there a year later by oboist Vasile Marian for whom it was written. It was inspired by an Aztec poem.

The work depicts a quiet, warm, lazy summer afternoon and the protagonist is laying down on the grass. As he daydreams, his thoughts interact with the actual landscape creating a magical, unreal place.

In this piece the composer deliberately wrote everything he was told never to write for the oboe. After significant revisions in 1996, it became arguably one of the longest and most difficult pieces for the instrument

Miguel del Aguila writes “Many oboists still preferred to play the older version, as they considered this new one unplayable. That, until Mr. Watanabe proved it to be otherwise.“