News & Observer (Raleigh, NC)

September 25, 2000

Two nights of great sax

By OWEN CORDLE

RALEIGH -- At the Universal Exhibition of Paris in 1855, a panel of judges praised Adolphe Sax's new invention thusly: "It is perfect whether one considers it from the point of view of intonation and sonority or if one examines the mechanism." The judges noted that the origin of all other instruments was lost in history and modifications, but that the saxophone "is the fruit of a single concept and from the first day it has been what it will be in the future."

Sax (1814-94) saw the full acceptance of his instrument in military and concert music during his lifetime, and he argued for the instrument's use in symphonic music. But today, more than a century after his death, symphony orchestras still do not employ saxophones.

It is against this background that the New Century Saxophone Quartet performed with the North Carolina Symphony on Friday and Saturday at Memorial Auditorium. With Gerhardt Zimmermann conducting, the groups premiered Peter Schickele's five-part "New Century Suite (Concerto for Saxophone Quartet and Orchestra)" to open the orchestra's classical series for this season.

Schickele, best known for his satirical P.D.Q. Bach recordings, also composes serious works, and in a preperformance statement from the stage Saturday night, he allowed that he likes pieces that express both. But the concerto is mostly serious, although not gravely so.

Hearing the saxophone family in jazz and pop music has conditioned us to certain sonorities: the dance band saxophone section, the honking R&B solo, the wimpy pleading of smooth jazz, the lonely-streets movie soundtrack. Classical saxophone is a different bag altogether. At times during the concerto, you could imagine the quartet as a mellow extension of the French horn section or the baritone saxophone as an ersatz bassoon or the soprano saxophone as a first violin. The point is that in Schickele's writing and the quartet's articulation, blend and tone were consonant with symphonic tradition. If this had been the jazz-based World Saxophone Quartet playing the same notes -- however interesting the possibility -- the results probably would have been immiscible.

The Winston-Salem-based New Century quartet -- Michael Stephenson (soprano), Robert Faub (alto), Stephen Pollock (tenor), Brad Hubbard (baritone) -- played with the kind of dexterity and precision that made you want to either sell your saxophone or hit the practice room for the next 10 years. Several passages found the soprano peeling 16th- or 32nd-note scales in unison with the violins. Other passages found the quartet emerging from careening counterpoint to lush, French horn-like voicings.

Schickele's concerto is modern in the sense that there are dense harmonies reminiscent of Stravinsky. (But then there are waltz-time passages reminiscent of Strauss.) It's a composition that honors Sax's intention to bring a new voice to the orchestra. After the concerto, the quartet played an encore, "The Piggly Wiggle," tongue-in-cheek parlor music that calls to mind an earlier era.

The symphony framed the Schickele piece with a suite from Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring" and Beethoven's "Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Opus 92." The latter is full of drama and affords lots of emotionally bracing moments. Throughout the concert the orchestra was, in a word, magnificent.

The entire Saturday night concert was broadcast live on UNC-TV and WCPE-FM.