Review Details
TEATIME CONCERT SAXES INC.
Alan Cooper
29 May 2009
Zeste
The expansive repertoire on offer from Aberdeen University Music continued its ever broadening appeal with a performance by Saxes Inc., a professional saxophone ensemble comprising a quartet of experienced local musicians: Colin Hunter, Ailsa Mathieson, Amy Dow and Sarah Gove. They were the featured guests at Wednesday’s Teatime Concert where they presented a varied and richly entertaining selection of music. Their programme ranged far and wide from French “impressionist” or twentieth century English compositions to American jazz and Broadway classics beginning in striking form with an arrangement by Paul Harvey of a piece that was a favourite in the middle ages, the Agincourt Song, dating back as far as 1415. Harvey’s arrangement had kept some of the flavour of early music in its harmonies but there was more than a hint of modernism in this arrangement too.
From the early fifteenth century we seemed to move to somewhere around the nineteen twenties with Sarah Gove’s excellent arrangement of Matyas Seiber’s Three Dances followed in even more modern style by Paul Nagel’s Jive for Five, in this case minus the optional part for bass saxophone.
An arrangement by the French saxophonist Marcel Mule of two movements by Gabriel Pierné was for me the first real highlight of the performance with splendidly delicate and well focused colouring in the quartet’s playing. Then, still on top form, came the Four Comedy Dances by Paul Carr. Quirky and unusual settings these certainly were, but I found them very effective and hugely entertaining. Despite a fine solo performance from Colin Hunter, I did not find the arrangement of Gershwin’s Summertime from Porgy and Bess quite so effective, it lacked atmosphere, but then the second movement of Gordon Jacob’s Quartet gelled nicely and the musicians hit the target square on in a very impressive performance indeed.
Another arrangement of a Gershwin classic Fascinating Rhythm worked splendidly. I loved the little quote from I Got Rhythm in the middle. This was followed by the Glenn Miller classic American Patrol and finally a wonderfully brave attempt at Ravel’s Bolero which did not quite succeed because it missed the whole point of the piece which relies largely on the contrasting timbres of different instruments. Nevertheless, this was a hugely valuable experience for the music students in the audience; an object lesson from four splendid performers in which musical arrangements work best. After all, many of them will find such problems at the very heart of their future careers.