This CD reissues the two LP volumes that the Rascher Saxophone Ensemble released in the mid 1970s (nearly all of the two LPs' combined works are included, 19 tracks total). A total of 24 saxophonists took part in these recording sessions, working in ensembles of various sizes, with Sigurd Rascher himself conducting and holding down the contrabass saxophone chair.
Sigurd Rascher's notes on Georges Kastner's "Sextuor": "A genius often engenders creativity in a mind close to him. Such was the friendship of Adolphe Sax and Georges Kastner, when the latter composed in 1844 a work for instruments that had sprung from the phantasy of the former. Of these only the Basso had, in that year, reached the hands of a player and the ears of music lovers - in Berlioz' "Hymne" and in Kastner's opera "Le Dernier Roi de Juda". The "Sextuor" is the earliest original work for Saxophone Ensemble. Whether Sax and/or Kastner ever heard the "Sextuor", I do not know; nor how often it has been played in Europe. The US premiere was given on June 30, 1975 at Camphill Village in Copake, New York, and the recording was made on July 2, 1975 in Memorial Chapel of Union College, Schenectady, New York. In these performances the instrumentation was SSATBB."
Sigurd Rascher's general liner notes on these recordings: "The new instrument that so delighted the Paris musicians who heard it in the early years of its existence, rightly bore the name "Sax-sound". It was to be a link between the woodwinds and brasses on the one hand, and between the string and wind instruments on the other. Already then it seems to have been clear that it would be one of the most adaptable chamber-music instruments, be it in a group of mixed wind instruments, as was the case in the first concert, in which it was presented to the public on February 3rd, 1844 in Paris, or in a group of six saxophones, as was planned by Kastner when he composed his "Sextour" in the same year. And when the various sizes of saxophones were at hand, a quartet of them was actually used in the orchestra, barely ten years after its invention. Eventually the diversification would also include combinations with string and percussion instruments. The saxophone quartet enjoys today great popularity, and with the increasing number of good players in colleges and universities the large ensemble will soon rival it."
Collective personnel: Anthony Alduino and Carina Rascher, soprano; Barth Chapman, Roger Fry, Lawrence Gwozdz, Alan Hallmark, Fredrick Heyburn, David Lester, Patrick Meighan, Joan Penny, Marjorie Rintoul, Robert Shepperd, Mark Taggart, and Susan Wittkop, alto; William Burggraf, Bruce Weinberger, and John Worley, tenor; Linda Bangs, William Fredrickson, and Ray Spires, baritone; David Bilger, David Carlson, and Kenneth Deans, bass; Sigurd Rascher, contrabass
Recorded at Coronet Recording Co., Columbus, Ohio in 1974 and Union College, Schenectady, New York on July 2 and 3, 1975
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