Description

The saxophone was named after the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax. Whether as a solo instrument or as part of the orchestra, it seldom appears in concert halls and opera houses today. Nonetheless, before the instrument found its his true home – the world of jazz  – it was to be heard in classical music. Its first prominent appearance was in Georges Bizet’s incidental music to Daudet’s L’arlésienne in 1872, yet it failed to establish itself in the orchestra. There are however countless chamber works for the saxophone and many concertos for saxophone and orchestra. Three particularly brilliant and virtuosic concertos are presented on this CD.

John Williamsis today Hollywood’s leading film composer. Escapades for saxophone and orchestra is based on the music to Catch me if you can, the 2002 comedy about a con man starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks. It was directed by Steven Spielberg, who in this film worked with “his” composer John Williams for the twentieth time.
Michael Nymanis one of the most dazzling figures in the post-modern music scene. Where the Bee dances was commissioned by the Bournemouth Sinfonietta and performed on July 13, 1991 during the Cheltenham Music Festival.
Andrei Eshpaiwas born in 1925 the son of a composer and folk song researcher in Russia. He wrote the Saxophone Concerto in 1985/86.

The New Philharmonic Orchestra of Westphalia was founded by a merger of two orchestras in the northern Ruhr area in 1996: the Westphalian Symphony Orchestra in Recklinghausen and the Philharmonic Orchestra in Gelsenkirchen.

The conductor Heiko Mathias Förster makes regular guest appearances with orchestras all over the world. The Israel Symphony Orchestra, the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra, the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Berlin, the Orquesta Sinfónica del Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona and the Prague Symphony Orchestra are only a few of the ensembles Heiko Mathias Förster has conducted in recent years.

Description

The message was dismal and boded ill. Written at the beginning of the twentieth century, Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony began by burdening the beginning of the new age with a fateful omen in the first movement. A funeral march opens the work – uncanny, oppressive and almost totally lacking in the heroic pathos that had characterized the funeral march at the beginning of Mahler’s Second Symphony. The opening movement of the Fifth is dominated far more by the “self-pitying pogrom mood” , stemming from the bleak experience of having grown up in a ghetto, with which Alma Mahler often cynically described her husband’s frame of mind. The first people who heard the Fifth were disconcerted. “After the scherzo there were even hisses”, Mahler noted of the premiere, which took place under his direction in Cologne on October 18, 1904. Only the Adagietto, the fourth movement, received the unanimous approval of the audience and press from the beginning.

The New Philharmonic Orchestra of Westphalia was founded by a merger of two orchestras in the northern Ruhr area in 1996: the Westphalian Symphony Orchestra in Recklinghausen and the Philharmonic Orchestra in Gelsenkirchen.

The conductor Heiko Mathias Förster makes regular guest appearances with orchestras all over the world. The Israel Symphony Orchestra, the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra, the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Berlin, the Orquesta Sinfónica del Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona and the Prague Symphony Orchestra are only a few of the ensembles Heiko Mathias Förster has conducted in recent years.

Description

The New Philharmonic Orchestra of Westphalia was founded by a merger of two orchestras in the northern Ruhr area in 1996: the Westphalian Symphony Orchestra in Recklinghausen and the Philharmonic Orchestra in Gelsenkirchen.

The year 2010 has given the Neue Philharmonie Westfalen another opportunity to present itself and the culture of the Ruhr to audiences from far beyond the region, with the orchestra being represented at many levels in the programme of the European Capital of Culture RUHR.2010 – whether within the framework of Local Heroes Weeks, the Henze Project, “!SING Symphony of a Thousand” conducted by Lorin Maazel or the internet opera of the Ruhr Music Theatre – and yet again functioning as an ambassador for culture.

The conductor Heiko Mathias Förster makes regular guest appearances with orchestras all over the world. The Israel Symphony Orchestra, the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra, the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Berlin, the Orquesta Sinfónica del Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona and the Prague Symphony Orchestra are only a few of the ensembles Heiko Mathias Förster has conducted in recent years.

Ursula Schoch played in the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Claudio Abbado for two years. In 2000 she became leader of the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, which with its principal conductor Mariss Jansons is one of the most popular European ensembles.

Description

When black and white notes turn into sound …

The feeling when all of us play together and the notes in black and white turn into music is overwhelming. The sound is warm, full and intoxicating, sometimes almost inaudibly soft, sometimes brutally loud.

The Phantastische Zauberträume (fantastical magic dreams) by Siegfried Matthus offer particularly great variety. Sparklingly fast runs alternate with frozen moments, lyrical passages are contrasted with eruptive staccato orgies. To record this work is a real challenge.

Rhythm of the Americas by the American saxophonist and composer Bob Mintzer demands quite different abilities from the performers; the orchestra and we ourselves turn into a big band, we need jazz feeling, offbeats and a gigantic sound! Beside their solo projects all four members of the quartet also help out moreover regularly when saxophonists are required in Berlin orchestras like the Berlin Philharmonic. The clair-obscur Saxophone Quartet’s most recent distinctions were at the International ADMC Competition in Illzach in 2007, the Gaudeamus Music Competition in 2007 and the Friends’ Prize at the Jeunesses Musicales in 2008.