Mckenzie Sawers Duo After the Tryst 1 Sally Beamish (B
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After the Tryst New music for saxophone and piano mckenzie sawers duo After the Tryst 1 Sally Beamish (b. 1956) Caliban (2014) [4:16] 2 James MacMillan (b. 1959) After the Tryst (1988, arr. 1995)** [2:47] New music for saxophone and piano arr. Gerard McChrystal Judith Weir (b. 1954) Sketches from a Bagpiper’s Album (1984)** 3 1. Salute [3:31] mckenzie sawers duo 4 2. Nocturne [1:39] 5 3. Lament, over the sea [2:37] 6 Michael Nyman (b. 1944) Miserere Paraphrase (1989/94) [6:45] 7 Alasdair Nicolson (b. 1961) Slow Airs and March (1994)* [12:45] Sue McKenzie soprano saxophone (tracks 1–7, 9–12), 8 Joe Duddell (b. 1972) Fracture (1999)* [4:36] alto saxophone (track 8) 9 Ian Wilson (b. 1964) Drive (1992)* [6:13] Ingrid Sawers piano 10 Cecilia McDowall (b. 1951) Mein blaues Klavier (2006)* [10:56] 11 Michael Nyman Shaping the Curve (1990) [8:39] 12 Graham Fitkin (b. 1963) Bob (1996)** [2:14] Total playing time [67:06] * premiere recording ** first recording of this version Sue McKenzie would like to thank Kerry Long at Recorded on 11-13 July 2017 Cover image: Sorrow is Kissing Me, Join the Delphian mailing list: Yanagisawa Saxophones, Tom Bacon and Jean- at Broughton St Mary’s Parish Berlin, Germany, 2010; black and white www.delphianrecords.co.uk/join Church, Edinburgh photograph © Ronny Behnert / François Bescond at D’Addario Woodwinds, Ruth Like us on Facebook: Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter Bridgeman Images www.facebook.com/delphianrecords Prowse and Malcolm Kirkpatrick at The Wind 24-bit digital editing: Matthew Swan Artist photography © Marc Marnie Section, Judith Walsh, Mike Brogan, all the Philps 24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter Design: John Christ Follow us on Twitter: and especially Mackinnon and Emily Green. Piano: Steinway model D, Booklet editor: John Fallas @delphianrecords 2016, serial no 600443 Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK Piano technician: Norman Motion www.delphianrecords.co.uk Notes on the music Latecomers to classical music, the members combination of simple piano arpeggios with a in bare outline after an opening flurry but more prominent in the work’s second half: of the saxophone family are still rarely heard skipping, searching melody that seems on the threaded throughout the piece) ‘that John once the expansive release after the energy rush. within orchestral contexts; the soprano cusp of peeling away altogether. overheard me playing and which he expressed saxophone (despite appearances in Richard a particular liking for’, as the composer has put Gerard McChrystal, arranger of MacMillan’s Strauss’s Sinfonia domestica and Ravel’s By necessity, arrangements comprise a it. Despite its harmonic restriction, Nyman’s After the Tryst, is also the dedicatee of Ian Bolero) perhaps even more so. Yet its significant portion of the soprano saxophone’s inventive changes in texture and figuration Wilson’s Drive. This was Wilson’s first work distinctive, reedy tone and snapping agility repertory. MacMillan’s piece is most familiar mean it sounds nothing like a study in restraint. for saxophone, and he has since gone on to have found it a place within contemporary in its original version for violin and piano; the There is a Greenaway connection here, too: become one of the instrument’s most prolific solo and chamber settings. Intriguingly, arrangement recorded here was made by the Shaping the Curve served as a study for the composers: his output includes more than those qualities put it in similar territory to the Northern Irish saxophonist Gerard McChrystal soprano saxophone concerto Where the two dozen works featuring solo saxophone very un-classical world of the bagpipes – a in 1995. Michael Nyman’s Miserere Bee Dances, which Harle premiered with or saxophone quartet, in chamber scores, connection made explicit in two of the works Paraphrase has similar origins. Originally the Bournemouth Sinfonietta at the 1991 multimedia performances and concertos. on this recording, by Judith Weir and Alasdair written to be performed by Nyman and Cheltenham Festival. The title of that piece Drive is a relatively modest exploration of Nicolson (although Weir’s piece was originally Alexander Balanescu – violinist of the Michael alludes to Ariel’s song ‘Where the bee sucks’, different regions of the soprano’s range. After composed for clarinet). A third piece, James Nyman Band – as part of the score to Peter of which Nyman had recently composed a a short introduction, three sections exploit the MacMillan’s After the Tryst, from which the Greenaway’s 1989 film The Cook, the Thief, setting for Prospero’s Books, Greenaway’s film instrument’s registers in turn – medium-high, album takes its name, also has its origins in his Wife and her Lover, it was arranged by the version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. low, then high – the last with a soaring melody Scottish folk music. composer in 1994 for John Harle, another supported by a rippling piano, released suddenly member of the band. In Greenaway’s film, Joe Duddell also uses compositional from its chordal bonds. A brief glance back to In 1984, MacMillan made a ballad setting of the Miserere (sung by the scullery boy, Pup) restrictions as prompts for the imagination the first section serves as an enigmatic coda. ‘The Tryst’, by the early twentieth-century accompanies scenes inside the restaurant in his piece Fracture. It is one of three duos, Perth-born poet William Soutar. After kitchen, including a spectacular tracking shot all dating from 1999 (the others are Parallel If Shaping the Curve established a remote performing it frequently with his folk group near the film’s beginning. In keeping with Lines for percussion and piano, and Shiver connection to The Tempest, a much closer one Broadstone, MacMillan found the song had the film’s themes of gourmanderie, sex and and Shake for trumpet and piano), in which is made with Sally Beamish’s Caliban. It too is sunk deep into his musical subconscious. brutality, Nyman’s music combines Baroque the composer set out to achieve complete a preparatory work, this time a character study It resurfaced in several concert works of the poise, an ecstatic melody and a half-glimpsed equality between two instrumental players. for Beamish’s 2014 score for choreographer 1980s, among them the music-theatre piece threat of menace. Fracture – the only piece on this album written David Bintley’s adaptation of the play at Búsqueda (1988) and Tryst (1989) for chamber for alto rather than soprano saxophone – is Birmingham Royal Ballet. (Around this time orchestra. The poignant miniature heard In contrast, Shaping the Curve is an openly made up of two alternating materials, both Beamish also composed Ariel, for solo viola, here – which elongates and ornaments the joyful expression of vitality and renewal. syncopated and involving wide melodic leaps, and Miranda Dreaming, for cello; the latter original tune, while retaining its basic harmonic Written a year after the release of The Cook but one running at a quarter the speed of the work can be heard on another recent Delphian outline – is the best known, however, proving …, it was again composed for Harle – based other. For the most part the faster music leads, album, Robert Irvine’s collection Songs irresistible to performers and listeners in its strictly on a sequence of four chords (heard but the slower, more lyrical type becomes and Lullabies [DCD34173].) Caliban’s half- Notes on the music human, half-spirit nature – cruel, capricious, atmosphere of Lasker-Schüler’s poem; but who marched in Prince Charles Stuart’s Like Wilson’s Drive, each section of Sketches but capable of great wisdom and poetry – is it is the opening four notes of the piece – a Jacobite army at the Battle of Culloden in from a Bagpiper’s Album focuses on a different manifested in jagged lines that can equally swift, widening zip – that are its structural 1745; this ill-fated enterprise ended the hopes part of the soloist’s register, this time in the become lyrical cascades: erratic stamps foundation, initiating rapidly crossing streams of ‘Bonnie’ Prince Charlie and initiated the order medium, high, low. (In Weir’s own mixed with sudden introspection. In its central of notes between saxophone and piano that English repression of the Highland culture string trio arrangement of the work, where section this short caprice slows to recall are tightly integrated but always evolving. from which Reid had come. Placed on trial in it is retitled A Bagpiper’s String Trio, the solo Caliban’s most artful moment, his speech York, alongside seventy other prisoners of line is given to a different instrument for each ‘The isle is full of noises’. If there is an affinity between soprano war, Reid attempted to defend himself on the movement.) The melody is built from the basic saxophone and Highland bagpipes, it was basis that he had not carried a sword or rifle intervals of Scottish pipe tunes, accompanied The poetry that inspired Cecilia McDowall’s presumably in Graham Fitkin’s mind when into battle – only his pipes. Nevertheless, the with remarkable thriftiness by a piano that Mein blaues Klavier is more recent, written he composed his short duo Bob in 1996. It presiding judge ruled that since a Highland shadows it closely, harmonising or altering by the German poet Else Lasker-Schüler was, he says, ‘my first piece to use Scottish regiment never went to war without a its tone without acting out a part of its own. (1869–1945). The piano of the title lies in a snap grace notes’; he used them again later piper, the pipes themselves constituted an (In its economy of writing, the piece recalls faraway land, neglected and ruined.