Ballades For Saxophone And Orchestra

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Cat No: 8557454

Release Date: 05 January 2004

Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 747313245420

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: BALLADES FOR SAXOPHONE AND ORCHESTRA

Description
Ballades for Saxophone and OrchestraTomasi Martin Ravel Piazzolla Dragatakis IturraldeOf Corsican descent, Henri Tomasi was born in 1901 inMarseilles, where he studied before entering the Paris Conservatoire. There hewas a composition pupil of Paul Vidal, winning the Prix de Rome in 1927. Healso studied with D'Indy. He established himself as a conductor and as acomposer for the theatre, with a series of concertos that displayed his veryconsiderable powers of orchestration. He wrote his Ballade for altosaxophone and orchestra in 1938 for hisfriend Marcel Mule, one of the leading saxophonists in France. In form andinspiration the work follows the tradition of the fourteenth-century ballade ofthe medieval troubadours, with the solo saxophone taking the r??le of the clown.The work is based on a poem by Suzanne Malard, Tomasi's wife:Sur un vieux th?¿me anglais, long maigre et flegmatique comme lui un clown raconte son histoire spleenetique?á la nuit. L'ombre de son destin, le long des quais zigzague et le go??tde megot qu'en sa bouche ont pris de vieilles blaguesle rend fou. Fuir son habit trop large et sa chair monotone en n'etantentre la joie et la douleur, qu'un saxophone hesitant ! Son desespoir, au fond d'une mare sonorecoule ?á pic. Et le clown se resigne ?á faire rire encore le public.[On an old English theme, long, thin and phlegmaticlike hima clown tells his melancholy taleto the night.The shadow of his fate, the length of the zigzagging quaysand the tasteof the fag-end that in his mouth has taken up old jestsmakes him mad.To get away from his coat, too big, and his dull fleshwhile only being,between joy and sorrow, a saxophonehesitating!His despair, to the bottom of a sounding pool sinks right down.And the clown resigns himself again to makingthe public laugh.] The saxophone is well adapted to this r??le, expressingfeelings between laughter and tears, ranging from dramatic despair to thedynamic heights.The Swiss composer Frank Martin was born in Geneva in 1890,the tenth and youngest child of a Calvinist minister. He later based his careerthere, as he developed his own original voice as a prolific composer in manygenres. His Ballade for alto saxophone, strings, percussion and piano waswritten in 1938 and dedicated to Sigurd Rascher, providing an importantaddition to contemporary saxophone repertoire. The composer himself wrote: 'Tosurround and carry the saxophone I chose a string orchestra, with percussionand piano. Since the saxophone holds a central place among wind instruments insome way between the brass and the woodwind, other wind instruments would haveeach had a more characteristic sound and would have damaged its independence.The piano and percussion, on the other hand, could only help to bring out itssinging voice'. The mood of the solo instrument ranges from the elegiac to thecommanding, producing a very robust sound. The Ballade is one of a series ofsuch works and was followed, over the years, by similar compositions for flute
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