Origines: 19th Century European Saxophone Quartets – Quartetto Cherubini

The composers of the works collected in this Da Vinci Classics recording, which explores the early history of the saxophone and of its repertoire, belong to what we may call “Sax’s club”: a group of composers, performers, colleagues and friends who actively supported his enterprise by adopting his instruments and writing for them. These musicians were almost all involved in operatic music, which had a very strong influence in France in the middle of 19th century. This interest is directly mirrored by their saxophone quartet compositions, which often adopt a melodic and lyrical style, looking for beautiful accompanied melodies, rather than for complex counterpoint, and do not show any particular experimental or innovative feature. This CD constitutes the first recording of the complete nineteenth-century European repertoire for saxophone quartet.