Someone has given my teacher an arrangment of "The Flight of the Bumblebee" for oboe and cor anglais and he thought it would be "fun" to play this in the end of year concert

Since no one else has a cor anglais I am the one who gets lumbered with the cor anglais part. I initially said no but he said it didn't have to be that fast and he could always present it in a humourous fashion as "the flight of the dying bumblebee" He inisisted I take it away and work on it for a week before giving a definite answer. (And of course he knows me well enough to know that I won't be able to leave it in my bag all week )

It turns out that it is not that exhausting to play as the "bumblebee" wanders back and forth between the oboe and the cor anglais but a lot of the cor anglais part is variations on a chromatic between A and C which, of course, are precisely the notes which get my fingers in a muddle at speed because they are different from my usual conservatoire system.

Anyway, what I wanted to know is, if I am intending to play this at any sort of speed, is it better to use the thumbplate or the right-hand side key (which I think is supposed to be a trill key)? The thumbplate seems to be smoother but the trill key at least has the advantage of using my right index finger (albeit in a different way) which is what I'm used to doing on the conservatoire oboe.

I can't answer definitively as my "thumbplate" oboe is actually a dual system, so it lacks the thumbplate style side key (it has conservatoire style side keys).

However, I'm pretty sure that if you are playing fast chromatic passages (rather than trilling) then "normal" fingering would probably be used, so you have to get your thumb limbered up. With dual system I would have the option of using conservatoire fingering if it was easier, but since I normally use "thumbplate" fingering, it would probably be slower for me. I do use conservatoire C when trilling B-C though.