Dolce
Contents listed after review
Kenneth Tse (soprano saxophone)
Jichen Zhang (alto saxophone) *
Casey Dierlam Tse (piano)
rec. 2023/24, University of Iowa School of Music Concert Hall, Iowa City, USA
Crystal Records CD784 [75]

Dolce, this disc’s title, provides only some indication of the variety and pleasure that is contained within. Kenneth Tse, the luminous soprano saxophonist, and pianist Casey Dierlam Tse perform a recital that ranges from Bach to contemporary pieces and do so with flair and perfect rapport.

They start with Viet Cuong’s Sanctuary, written in 2000, a nourishing, circling tune for the saxophone that becomes buttressed by bass notes in the piano, increasing in tempo – a brief work of affectionate liveliness. Or, in the composer’s words, ‘it’s essentially my attempt at writing a musical hug’. I’m not sure who arranged the Italian Concerto but the outer two movements, in particular, work rather well for the soprano which takes most of the distinctive melody writing, though some is shared with the piano. Tse’s soprano tone is focused and crystalline but full of unexpected colour and his agility is splendid. Perhaps the direct lyricism of the central movement is less portable in that respect, but it’s still splendidly realised.

Villa-Lobos wrote his Fantasia in F for Marcel Mule. It’s scored for soprano (or tenor) saxophone and small orchestra but is heard here in the saxophone and piano reduction in the key that the composer originally envisioned, F major. It had the reputation as a tricky work, but saxophonists have taken to it with increasing enthusiasm in recent years and with its sparkling rhythmic patterns, which contrast with languid lyric episodes, one can hear exactly why. Tart, warm and sometimes frothy, its liveliness is both distinctive and attractive. In Ocres rouges, the French composer Alexis Ciesla searches for a more ethnic slant. A clarinettist himself, Ciesla wrote it for Jean-Denis Michat and saturates the work in klezmer sonorities, in soaring melodies, melancholic and joyful, that smear and coil their way through seven exciting minutes. A slow central section leads on to an exciting fast dance, a freilach that sweeps all care away.

A rather different source has inspired David DeBoor Canfield, a Ragtime Sonata after Joplin. This is one of Canfield’s pieces written in the style of or ‘after’ composers – he’s written them ‘after’ Vierne, Glière, Brahms and others. His Joplin piece has Graingeresque movement directions – ‘Jaunty walking tempo’, ‘Easy does it!’ and ‘Let ‘er rip!’ – which gives the listener an idea of the liveliness of the eleven-minute, three-movement piece, one that glides close to and then moves gently away from Ragtime. It’s music of sparkling communicativeness put across with the maximum of precision – listen to the precision of Tse’s articulation in the finale.

British composer and saxophonist Andy Scott wrote And Everything is Still…as a commission from the Royal Northern College of Music and the work was inspired by a poem by Lemn Sissay. It’s the shortest of the pieces in the disc, but its languid, long-breathed lines, flecked with decorations and curlicues, rising above the piano’s regular repeated phrases, are truly evocative. For the last piece, Piazzolla’s Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas, arranged by Michal Knot, the duo is joined by alto saxophonist Jichen Zhang. It’s sonically interesting how the two saxes sometimes seem to mimic the sound of a bandoneon and Piazzolla’s heat-filled, fiery tango inspirations permeate all four ‘seasons’. The most evocative of the four is surely ‘Winnter’ in which the two saxophones’ dovetailing and curling lines are truly moving.

Tse is a marvellously communicative player with perfect intonation and timbral variety. He leads the dance, the drama and the delights of a beautifully recorded disc.

Jonathan Woolf

Availability: Crystal Records

Contents:
Viet Cuong (b. 1990)
Sanctuary (2020)
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Italian Concerto, BWV971 (1735)
Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959)
Fantasia in F major, W490 (1948)
Alexis Ciesla (b. 1967)
Ocres rouges (c 2014)
David DeBoor Canfield (b. 1950)
Ragtime Sonata after Joplin
Andy Scott (b. 1966)
And Everything is Still… (2008)
Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992)
Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas (1965-70) arr Michal Knot *