Flux: Original Works for Saxophone Quartet
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: (Henri Constant) Gabriel Pierné, Hugo Reinhart, Will Gregory, Eugène Bozza, Guillermo Lago, Jean Baptiste Singelée
Genre:
Chamber
Label: Chandos
Magazine Review Date: 09/2017
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 81
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: CHAN10987

Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Andante et scherzo |
Eugène Bozza, Composer
Eugène Bozza, Composer Ferio Saxophone Quartet |
Hoe down |
Will Gregory, Composer
Ferio Saxophone Quartet Will Gregory, Composer |
Cíudades |
Guillermo Lago, Composer
Ferio Saxophone Quartet Guillermo Lago, Composer |
The Wordsworth Poems |
Guillermo Lago, Composer
Ferio Saxophone Quartet Guillermo Lago, Composer |
Introduction et Variations sur une ronde populaire |
(Henri Constant) Gabriel Pierné, Composer
(Henri Constant) Gabriel Pierné, Composer Ferio Saxophone Quartet |
Quartet |
Hugo Reinhart, Composer
Ferio Saxophone Quartet Hugo Reinhart, Composer |
Grand quatuor concertant |
Jean Baptiste Singelée, Composer
Ferio Saxophone Quartet Jean Baptiste Singelée, Composer |
Author: Richard Bratby
But what’s immediately striking about this disc is the tonal subtlety and expressiveness of the Ferios’ playing. Put aside any preconceptions about how a sax quartet sounds: from the very first item, Jean-Baptiste Singelée’s Grand quatuor of 1862 (dedicated, delightfully, to Ambroise Thomas), you can hear the transparency of the group’s tone and the range of their tonal palette, from the melting sweetness of Huw Wiggin’s soprano to the dark, trenchant sound of Shevaughan Beere on baritone.
Their phrasing is buoyant and lyrical; slow, impressionistic passages such as the opening of Pierné’s Introduction et variations and of the first of Guillermo Lago’s Wordsworth Poems (a Ferio commission) are lucidly and atmospherically voiced. But they can turn on a ha’penny too: witness their sonic transformation from smoky melancholy in ‘Sarajevo’ from Lago’s Cíudades to neon-lit urban glare in the suite’s second movement, ‘Tokyo’.
Lots to discover and enjoy here, then, in intensely musical performances. I was rather taken by Hugo Reinhart’s F minor Quintet – composed in 2006 in an idiom that makes Mendelssohn look avant-garde, and none the worse for it. That’s the nice thing about sax quartets – traditional assumptions about repertoire rarely apply. But in this case, at least, the artistry of the performances is beyond question.
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