Customer Reviews

The Solitary Saxophone

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This recording is the first BIS label release by French saxophonist Claude Delangle, saxophone professor at the Paris Conservatory. Performing only unaccompanied saxophone pieces on four different saxophones, he manages to convey the compositional ideas behind each work with his musicianship and virtuosity. This recording strongly influenced my musical thinking! Especially recommended are his performance of Berio's Sequenza VIIB and Betsy Jolas' Episode Quatrieme.

Claude Delangle is a true virtuoso in every sense of the word. On this cd he focuses on some abstract, unaccompanied pieces of sax literature. All of which require great finger and throat technique from the performer. He executes this perfecly on all 4 saxophones he plays on this cd. His tone is very pure and even and his intonation, as usual, is dead on. This cd should be in every classical saxophonist's library along with several other Delangle cd's. This guy is only getting better as he progresses.

Really, the perfection in saxophone playing and interpretation. If you're looking for the top music recordings in contemporary saxophone, then you must buy this one.

Stockhausen's "In Friendship" can be played on just about any solo instrument.I've heard a half-dozen renditions,all on different instruments. I think the piece works well on saxophone,its high energy affinities and the necessity to change timbre, tone inflection, as well as the speed of changing registers all helps.The Scelsi "Three Pieces" are difficult to interpret, I've heard flat uninspired performances, but here Delangle, we have an inner voice at work trying to find one as well in the Scelsi. Scelsi was fond of the long sustained sound, the minutiae contained within changing timbres over a single tone Delangle does shift his focus so to keep the work in the air. The Berio"Sequenza" as well is a difficult work interpretively. You need always to maintian a sense of momentum and align yourself with a goal of phrase, of structure. There are very few unaccompanied works for the Tenor Sax, and Jolas has done music a service here. Yet I find her music academic-bound for no reason. Her work is frequently predictable,it never enters a magical world of mystery and intrigue all very French art music components she should be familiar with.