Italian Saxophone Quartet, Tuesday, January 29, 2008

The Italian Saxophone Quartet gave an accomplished and fun performance at City Hall on Tuesday.

The repertoire was chosen to be representative of musical styles from diverse countries and ages, with little more in common than the relative brevity of each selection.

The Quartet is led by soprano saxophonist Federico Mondelci, a highly accomplished musician and garrulous commentator.

His equally talented colleagues are Marco Gerboni, who plays alto saxophone; Mario Marzi, tenor saxophone; and Massimo Mazzoni, baritone saxophone.

Five of Dr. Sax's 14 differently-sized creations remain (including the bass), but I know of no saxophone quintet.

What makes a saxophone quartet work — apart from the performers' talent level and the arrangements — is the close familial relationship among the instruments. (I confess to familiarity with only one other such ensemble, the post-bop World Saxophone Quartet.)

The mechanical sympathy overcomes the flaw inherent in the idea of a saxophone quartet: the relative paucity of material written specifically for it.

No matter how cleverly transcribed, as the Italians proved, music written for other instruments doesn't work quite as well.

That is not to suggest that the performance was anything less than superb.

The four signori play together with what looks like disarming ease, which comes only from blood, sweat and unending practice.

They have fun doing so, finding time in their performance for some broad humour.

What did we learn? The soprano saxophone can sound uncannily like a clarinet or a flute from time to time.

And the baritone sax apparently provided much of the soundtrack for the animated cartoons we all grew up with.

A baritone saxophone resembles a giant piece of industrial equipment; on this evidence, one imagines you could resurface the airport with a bass saxophone.

The first half of the programme included works from Scarlatti, Bach and Mozart; Paul Reade's Saxophone Quartet, the evening's standout; and selections from Jean Françaux and Michael Nyman.

This was the classical programme, and therefore the more intricate.

The second half of the concert, consisting of 20th century music, was mostly easier on the ear and more enthusiastically received by an almost full house.

A Greek suite, some Gershwin and a pair of South American compositions by Aníbal Troilo and Astor Piazzolla bookended a Scott Joplin rag, which gave me a headache — as Joplin always does — and the evening's one real miscalculation.

'Duke' Ellington once told a music critic that the most important word in the phrase "It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing" was "that".

I always thought he was kidding, until the Quartet essayed Cole Porter's I've Got You Under My Skin, composed, Sr. Mondelo told us, as "a madrigal".

Shorn of its lyrics, which no Porter opus should ever be, and played without that swing, it emerged as a dirge, the life sucked out of it.

No one's evening was ruined, however, and the audience was effusive in its applause. Quite right, too.

These four maestri could be by turns stately and then spritely, tossing phrases back and forth — trading 16s, one might say — all within 48 bars.

And, boy, are they technically outstanding musicians.

Present on the night in the Mayor's Box were His Excellency Sir Richard and Lady Gozney, the excellent Dale Butler, accompanied by a rare beauty, and the Mayor himself.

From ground level, it looked as if the Box would hold three workstations, should the Corporation need extra office space, now that the Bermuda Society of Arts has won at least a temporary reprieve.

Italian Saxophone Quartet plays at City Hall again this evening.