The saxophone has a unique status among instruments in having its original reason for existing – as an instrument that would blend seamlessly inside a wind ensemble – utterly usurped by subsequent events. American jazz musicians transformed it from blending into anything much into the source of a kaleidoscope of fiercely independent voices, and composers have never quite been sure how to deal with the fallout. Ignoring jazz feels wantonly perverse; but embracing the music can bring with it a whole bunch of cultural misunderstandings.

All things considered, Guido Bäumer and Aladár Rácz’s recital disc of mid-20th century music for saxophone and piano is a very low-key record, with only Edison Denisov’s 1970 Alto Saxophone Sonata rescuing the project from a prevailing blandness. Always a canny operator, Denisov realises that a score merely referencing jazz heat and stylistic fingerprints will register as second-hand, and instead pushes his notation to such extremes that the saxophonist is obliged to think in the moment. The undulating forms of the opening movements – a brutal clash of distilled jazz harmonies thrown to the atonal wolves – is bracing; then the free-tempo second movement leapfrogs through a remarkably rapid turnover of events, as if Denisov were improvising on manuscript paper.

Elsewhere we’re dealing with diminishing returns. Hans Gál’s Saxophone Sonata (1949) is generic mid-century classicism and Bäumer overeggs its melodic contours, pumping something that is essentially flaccid with Romantic heat. Hindemith’s 1943 Sonata, originally for alto horn but authorised for performance on alto saxophone by the composer, feels like a coldly professional score more engaging to play than hear. Erwin Schulhoff’s Hot Sonata (1930) and especially Werner Heider’s Sonata in Jazz (1954) are painfully prim, and Bäumer and Rácz don’t help their cause by playing with an ingratiating smile – every syncopated figure forced behind inverted commas, every blue note spelt out in case we miss the jazz reference. As I say, thank goodness for Edison Denisov.