Adolphe Sax invented
a remarkable number of instruments,
providing contemporary French composers
with a remarkable range of instrumental
timbres. John Eliot Gardiner used many
of Sax’s inventions in his memorable
production of Berlioz’s Les Troyens
at the Chatelet Theatre.
One of the instruments
that did not feature in this production
was the saxophone, Berlioz wrote no
major music for the instrument. Sax
invented the saxophone with the intention
of combining the richly nuanced sound
of the clarinet with the radiance of
a brass instrument. He applied for the
patent of the instrument in 1843 and
followed this with a publicity campaign
attempting to get the instrument used
by contemporary composers. He was successful
in a limited way but never really managed
to assemble a corpus of work by major
composers. There are many might-have-beens;
a concerto from Rossini, Wagner writing
the opening solo in Act 3 of Tristan
und Isolde for a saxophone rather
than a cor anglais.
But the unfortunate
result is that, with the exception of
Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet and
Bizet’s Arlesienne Suite, the
saxophone rarely appears nowadays in
the concert hall or opera house in 19th
century music.
To address this lack,
the Alliage Saxophone Quartet have been
commissioning new works and transcriptions
from various composers. So Jacques Larocque
has arranged Schumann’s Piano Quintet
for piano and saxophone quartet and
Hendrik Schnoke arranged Mendelssohn’s
Midsummer’s Night’s Dream music for
the same combination.
How you view this disc
depends on your attitude to the art
of transcription and whether the world
of German chamber music is sacrosanct.
Throughout the 19th century
transcription was an art with flourished
as a means of transmission of new and
popular music in lieu of records and
radios. But earlier, in the baroque
era and later, it was quite acceptable
to arrange music for whatever group
of instruments was available. This is
an attitude that persists in the wind
band and military band genres where
conductors flesh out a limited repertoire
with arrangements.
So our main criterion
for listening to this recording is,
is it successful? First, I must commend
the quartet and pianist Jang-Eun Bae
for their musicianship. Their playing
of both pieces is natural and idiomatic
and you never feel that they are struggling
to re-invent the music in its new guise.
Inevitably there are
losses and gains. The smoothness of
the saxophone timbre emphasises the
sense of line in all passages, also
its inability to play fast ‘string crossing’
passages means that we get some changes
of timbre. I felt that the Mendelssohn
arrangements worked better than the
Schumann, perhaps because the orchestral
textures gave the arranger more to work
with. It seemed that we were missing
less in the Mendelssohn. Schumann’s
Piano Quartet came over as a respectable
experiment but there were too many places
where I felt that I lost out. This was
particularly true in the tougher passages,
Schumann’s textures seemed to be smoothed
out and regularised.
Ultimately the Schumann
transcription failed to convince me,
I could not quite see what it was for.
So if you are interested in the transcription
as a modern art or simply fascinated
by the saxophone, then this is the disc
for you. If you love Schumann’s Piano
Quintet in its original form and can’t
bear to think of it any other way, then
stay well away.
Robert Hugill
for
details
Alliage Quartett (Daniel Gauthier – soprano
saxophone, Lutz Koppetsch – alto saxophone,
Koryun Asatryan – tenor saxophone, Sebastian
Pottmeier – baritone saxophone) 
MUSIKPRODUKTION DABRINGHAUS UND GRIMM MDG 903
1396-6 [65.44] 
