Technique Saxophone

Things that don't fit neatly into pigeonholes have always had a hard time, and so it has been with the saxophone; Hoffnung's string-tuba would have had very big problems. Sax was a tireless inventor: his plans for a monster canon, and a device for playing loud music from Parisian high ground never bore fruit, but the former anticipated Saddam Hussein and the latter, scaled down, is with us as Muzak. Though the saxophone has never found a regular place in the orchestra it has nevertheless captured the interest of a long line of composers; a square peg doesn't need to fit into any orchestral round hole when it is centre-stage.

Conceived under the sign of the sun, this is a series of works for saxophone and orchestra by French composers with a special affinity for the Mediterranean, its atmosphere and culture(s). From Florent Schmitt’s Légende, with its Orientalistic inspiration, over the Provencal scenes of Paule Maurice to Ravel’s pavane for a dead Spanish princess (arranged by Tami Nodaira), the programme covers the entire length of the Mediterranean basin. Indeed, with the samba rhythms of Milhaud’s Scaramouche it even crosses the Atlantic, in accordance with that composer’s vision of an imaginary, ideal Provence, ‘stretching from Constantinople to Rio de Janeiro’.