Phantasy in Blue: Music for Cello and Saxophone Quintet

Alban Gerhardt, Alliage Quintett

Released on 6/2/23 by Hyperion
Main artists: Alban Gerhardt Alliage Quintett
Genre: Classical

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Works for solo cello often include arrangements of pieces in other media due to the overall sparsity of originals for the cello, especially in chamber music, but this release by cellist Alban Gerhardt and the Alliage Quintet is something else again. The arrangements, by various composers, are for cello, saxophone quartet, and piano. This could easily have turned out as simply bizarre, especially inasmuch as the composers had their own individual approaches, yet each arrangement is fully thought through, and the pieces differ in the degree of remaking they undergo. The result is that one really hears some of the music in a new way. The most thorough reimagining is that applied by Stefan Malzew to Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which, alone among the works on the album, gets a new title, which is also used for the album as a whole. Malzew freely distributes sections of the piano part among the cello and the saxophones. Also striking is the Vivaldi Cello Concerto in A minor, RV 418, where the saxophones provide a texture sufficiently distant from that of the original work as to create a mysterious flavor. The works by Falla and Shostakovich, not for the cello originally, are a bit more straightforward, but really everything on the program hangs together, and Gerhardt's idea never wears out its welcome. The readings by the Alliage Quintet are warm and atmospheric, having the effect of a wash of sound, and the whole thing is beautifully captured by Hyperion's engineers in the Deutsche Kammermusiksaal in Cologne. An essential find for saxophonists and those who love them, this release hit classical best-seller charts in the spring of 2022.

© James Manheim /TiVo

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Phantasy in Blue: Music for Cello and Saxophone Quintet

Alban Gerhardt

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Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op. 33 (Arr. Malzew for Cello, Piano & 4 Saxophones): Introduction. Moderato quasi andante

Alliage Quintett

00:00:55

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Composer - Alliage Quintett, Ensemble, MainArtist - Alban Gerhardt, Cello, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Daniel Gauthier, Soprano Saxophone, AssociatedPerformer - Jang Eun Bae, Piano, AssociatedPerformer - Stefan Malzew, Arranger, Work Arranger - Sebastian Pottmeier, Baritone Saxophone, AssociatedPerformer - Simon Hanrath, Tenor Saxophone, AssociatedPerformer - Miguel Vallés Mateu, Alto Saxophone, AssociatedPerformer