The combination of small-scale choir and saxophone quartet is a surprising one, though it would take a particularly crabbed purist not to deny its effectiveness [sic]. I might have fallen into that category had I not been sent this to review … but still find myself won over.
It’s uncanny how credibly the saxophone can be made to sound like other instruments: on the opening track, Schütz’s Ich weiss, dass mein Erlöser lebt, sackbuts and cornets; and in Bach’s ‘Zion hört’ (from Wachet auf), a top line that sounds not unlike a French horn. Gabrieli’s antiphonal O magnum mysterium makes the most of the combination’s potential…
It’s an imaginative programme, too, blending the Renaissance and Baroque and new works that reference early polyphony in different ways … Best to focus on Schütz, whose music furnishes the recital’s structural backbone.
The saxophone quartet is so integrated within the choir that disbelief is easily suspended, and the choir itself sounds particularly confident and sure-footed…
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