SKU: PR.446411060

UPC: 680160096275. 11x14 inches.

Steven Stucky has described the saxophone quartet as surprisingly comparable to the string quartet as a classic chamber music medium, while in the concerto format providing a worthy counterweight to the string orchestra. At times, the saxophones in Music for Saxophones and Strings “whisper, murmur, sigh, sing, squeal, or even scream” as the composer has written in notes about the work. Commissioned for the Raschèr Quartet, the work falls into two main sections. The composer continues that “the opening slow movement is dark, nocturnal, troubled; the language is densely chromatic. Mysterious, barely audible rustlings become increasingly more alarming; creatures cry in the night; and the movement climaxes in a lyric outpouring of melancholy, even tragic character. The music subsides by way of cadenzas for the baritone and tenor saxophone. The second, fast movement arrives almost unnoticed, since at first it too is made up of disconnected fragments — quirky, skittish, playful. There are irregular rhythmic accents, gliding quarter-tone runs, scurrying saxophone figures (suggesting, perhaps, a distant echo the bebop style), and screaming excursions into the altissimo register. Briefly the melancholy of the slow, nocturnal opening returns, before a quick coda leads to an emphatic conclusion.”.