CLASSICAL

After the Tryst: New Music for Saxophone and Piano: Mckenzie Sawers Duo

Delphian

If you ever doubted there was great new music for the soprano saxophone, this will instantly refresh your faith in the instrument, heard here in the redoubtable hands of Sue Mckenzie with duo partner Ingrid Sawers at the piano. They open with Sally Beamish’s gutsy before entering the raunchier, juicier tonal world the Tryst of James Macmillan’s Caliban, After (convincingly arranged by Gerard Mcchrystal). Mckenzie’s rhythmic brilliance bites hard in Judith Weir’s quirky Bagpipe Album, Sketches from a complemented by the pounding gravitational harmonies of Nyman’s Miserere Paraphrase .The range of mood and colour on this disc is fascinating and extraordinary, from the dense, gloomy opening of Alasdair Nicolson’s and March, Slow Airs the playful mischief of Joe Duddell’s Fracture ,tothe organic inevitability of Ian Wilson’s Drive and Cecilia Mcdowall’s Mein blaues Klavier and the gorgeous sentimentality of Graham Fitkin’s Bob.