Forget what you think you know about how saxophone quartets sound. Forget that even the hottest quartets can sometimes seem like a botched excision from superior ensembles like big bands. How their lack of percussion and relatively limited bottom can make them come off as something of a novelty act when they attempt rhythm-based styles like jazz. Don't get me wrong: I am a sax quartet aficionado, with a special addiction to legendary innovators ROVA. I just didn't think I could really be surprised by such groupings at this point.
Then I heard the opening track of Guarda! by the Germany's New Art Saxophone Quartet. Attempting to describe here the sound of this piece, "L'aual da Tuoi," would not do it justice, but it was an epiphany. I was struck by how organic both the playing and the music seemed. Here at last was a group that was more than four great players coming together to trade off solos in a "saxophone super group." Instead, these guys sounded practically like a single instrument. And the music they were playing seemed a whole unto itself, instead of being a piece written for other instruments (or to sound like a familiar genre) but played on four saxophones.
Guarda! is a series of tone poems written for the ensemble by member Klaus Pfister, who plays soprano sax and clarinet. Pfister says in the liner notes that after a visit the small Swiss mountain village Guarda, he found himself gripped by the images and sounds he experienced there. The resulting album proves that Pfister is not only a remarkably creative composer, but he seems to have mastered the full expressive range of the saxophone quartet. As a testament both to the players and the composer, the pieces here never seem constrained by the instrumentation. The limitations of timbral range that inhibit some multi-instrument groupings are simply absent here.
The CD consistently surprises as the tracks move from one innovative stylistic approach to the next — but never aimlessly so. The tone poems cover a vast range from the lyricism of "Il peschin" to the virtuosic extended-technique density of "Il chant dal vent." Easily the most jaw-dropping of the pieces, though, has to be "Macun." It truly must be heard to be believed how a group could be so tight while playing music of such complexity. Add to this the excitement and utter originality of the composition itself, and words like "genius" are liable to form readily on one's tongue.
Guarda! had easily earned itself a spot on my Best of 2008 list when I noticed that it was released in 2003. 2003?! How Klaus Pfister and the New Art Saxophone are not already more widely known and celebrated is beyond me.
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