Marjan Mozetich is an Italian by birth, a Canadian by professional adoption (currently on the staff of the School of Music at Queen's University, Ontario) and, as it says here, a 'post-modern romantic' by compositional temperament. Championed mainly by CBC Records, his music certainly deserves the wider exposure which this recording may bring, but this may not have been the ideal item to choose for such a purpose. His proximity to Mozart is not just a matter of alphabetical serendipity - at least on the basis of this work, which seems closer to old-fashioned pastiche than post-modernism, romantic or otherwise. Roddy Elias's elegant yet powerful piece - which prompts me to coin the phrase 'aquatic-pastoral' - transcends its hippy-dippy premise to present the baritone saxophone as, effectively, a concerto instrument, a role which traditionally falls to the more tractable alto.
Most of the saxophone part is improvised by the performer, David Mott, who extracts a pleasingly full tone from even the extremes of the instrument's register throughout the music's intensely visual transformations. I do, however, have a non-musical gripe, in that the piece audibly falls into distinct sections, a fact confirmed in the booklet-notes as central to the music's conception. To then find the sections unindexed within the recording itself is a tad irritating, particularly with new repertoire such as this. Keith Jarrett's is an appealing composition, expertly balanced. His writing for the violin has a yearning, almost vocal quality, yet sentimentality is never allowed to displace honest sentiment.'