Stimulated by my love of automata, this work for solo oboe takes its name from the invention of Wolfgang von Kempelen, who in the late eighteenth century constructed an extraordinary mechanical man powered by clockwork, dressed in a stylish Turkish costume and capable of playing chess. The chess player turned out to be a fraud but sparked many other thinkers and inventors to pondering what the possibilities of automation might be. In Hesketh’s highly virtuosic work, the through-composed melody i...