Places To GoBook LookThe Arts,

Calendar, GamesCrossword

Book Reviews Elsewhere  (fresh daily from the Web)

 Movie Reviews Elsewhere  (fresh daily from the Web)

Zimmerman recital     Send a link to a friend

[SEPT. 30, 2003]  Keith M. Zimmerman will play soprano and alto saxophones in a faculty recital at Illinois Wesleyan University on Sunday, Oct 12, at 3 p.m. William R. West will be the pianist.

Program

Sonata in G major (grave, allegro, adagio, allegro molto), Giovanni Platti, transcribed by Eugene Rosseau

Fantasia (anime, lent, tres anime), Heitor Villa-Lobos

"Vocalise," Sergei Rachmaninoff, Opus 34, No. 14, transcribed by Larry Teal

Sonata (allegro, andantino cantabile, allegro vivace), Lawson Lunde

"Introduction, Dance, and Furioso," Herbert Couf

"Sonatine," Claude Pascal (in memory of Daniel Deffayet 1922-2002)

"Pulcinella," Eugene Bozza, Opus 53, No. 1

"Danse Hongroise," Justin Ring and Fred Hager, transcribed by Rudy Wiedoeft

Background notes from Keith Zimmerman

Giovanni Platti (ca.1690-1762) was a Venetian singer, violinist, oboist, teacher and prolific composer. He was well-known as a chamber music player in Bavaria when he died there. The Sonata in G major was originally for flute, but in Platti's time it was common for any of several instruments to play solo lines of a piece. This arrangement of the sonata is by well-known saxophonist and teacher Eugene Rosseau, who makes my classical alto and tenor saxophone mouthpieces.

Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959), a self-taught Brazilian composer, wrote his Fantasia for soprano saxophone, three horns and string orchestra in 1948 in Rio for the famous French saxophonist and teacher Marcel Mule. Villa-Lobos had returned earlier from Paris, where he had lived since 1923. Mule never performed the piece, due to a lack of interest on the part of various conductors to whom he showed it. Typical of the music of the composer's last period of activity, the fantasia emphasizes technique. The first movement features strong dancelike ideas before moving to an exotic and melancholy second movement. The second movement flows directly into the third movement, which uses some complex South American rhythms.

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943), the famous Russian composer and pianist, chose exile from his homeland after the revolution of 1917 to live in America and Switzerland and derived most of his income from concert performances in America and Europe. Entering the St. Petersburg Conservatory at age 9, he failed his general subject exams and moved to Moscow to study with Zverev, a strict disciplinarian, where he acquired his phenomenal piano skills. When Rachmaninoff was a young man, a very poor performance of his 1st Symphony and dismal reviews by critics resulted in an extended period of depression. He credited his recovery and eventual successful composing to a long period of daily hypnotic treatments while still in Russia. Eventually becoming an American citizen, he died in Beverly Hills, Calif. The opus number of his popular "Vocalise" places it between the 3rd and 4th Piano Concertos.

Larry Teal, flutist and saxophonist, was a world pioneer in the teaching and playing of classical saxophone at the University of Michigan at a time when very few colleges would allow a saxophonist to be a music major. In his work he joined American Cecil Leeson, Frenchman Marcel Mule and Danish-American Sigurd Rascher.

Lawson Lunde (b. 1935) in a recent letter tells me that the Sonata for alto saxophone and piano was a work in which the opening movement preceded the composition of the remaining ones by some time. The first movement was written for James Bestman, a Northwestern University graduate student saxophonist of Cecil Leeson. Several months later, while in the army, Lunde received a letter from Leeson's favorite pupil, the late Brian Minor, requesting that Lunde finish the work for a series of concerts Minor was planning. The piece was in progress at the time, so Lunde finished it.

 

[to top of second column in this article]

Minor and Lunde did a four-concert tour in Indiana including the piece and also recorded it. Leeson then persuaded the Southern Music Company to publish it in the series of contemporary saxophone pieces Leeson was editing for the publisher. By this time Leeson was saxophone professor at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., having been forced to leave Northwestern due to a mandatory retirement age. Leeson also recorded the piece. Brian Minor, a Muncie area native, succeeded Leeson as saxophone professor at Ball State, serving until his tragic death upon arriving home from a European tour several years later.

Herbert Couf (b. 1920) composed the "Introduction, Dance, and Furioso" in 1959. The Detroit teacher and saxophonist has written a number of pieces each for a different unaccompanied instrument. He was a clarinetist in the Detroit and Pittsburg Symphony Orchestras, also playing saxophone. Some years ago he designed a line of saxophones bearing his name which ultimately were incorporated into the present-day Keilworth line from Germany.

Claude Pascal (b. 1920) composed the "Sonatine" in 1948 as the examination piece for saxophone students of Marcel Mule at the Paris National Conservatory. Pascal, a Paris native, wrote in rather traditional style using classical forms and tonality with emphasis on melody and elegance. Some feel he shows influences from Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy.

Daniel Deffayet, alto and soprano saxophonist extraordinaire and saxophone quartet leader, was named saxophone professor at the Paris Conservatory upon the retirement of his teacher, Marcel Mule. In 1942 Mule had become the second person to hold the saxophone position following a lapse of saxophone teaching after Adolphe Sax, the saxophone's inventor, was removed from the conservatory due to large financial cuts following Napoleon's end of power. Deffayet, my teacher and friend, arranged for the French Ministry of Culture to pay my expenses to study in France with him. Deffayet died in December 2002, almost a year to the day after Mule's death. Privately Deffayet's students respectfully referred to him as "cher ami" (dear friend), Deffayet's way of addressing us in class in offering instruction and guidance. He enjoyed the Pascal very much, so I feel it fitting to dedicate this performance to the memory of "cher ami."

Eugene Bozza (1905-1991) was a native of Nice, France, a place where I resided during part of my study. Oddly, we never met. Both a composer and head of a regional conservatory, Bozza wrote a number of saxophone pieces for solo and quartet. Almost every saxophonist plays his beautiful Aria as a part of saxophone study.

Rudy Wiedoeft (1893-1940) transcribed "Danse Hongroise" in 1923 for his own use. Wiedoeft was an amazing technical master of the saxophone. Lacking music in the '20s for his many performances, he wrote many pieces and adapted others. Among his compositions: "Saxophun," "Saxophobia," "Saxotrix," "Saxarella," "Saxema" and a whole series of "Valses." Rudy was a legend in his own time and was largely responsible for the saxophone craze of the 1920s.

Wiedoeft's music and recordings sold in enormous quantities, along with so many saxophones that the industry couldn't keep up with demand. Everyone strove to sound like Rudy and tried to achieve something near his incredible single tongue speed and general technique. It is my custom to include at least one of his pieces on my recitals and clinic performances.

[Provided by Keith Zimmerman]

Flowers and Things

515 Woodlawn Road
Lincoln, IL

(217) 732-7507

"Your Professional Florist"

 

Lincolndailynews.com

is the place to advertise


Call (217) 732-7443
or e-mail

ads@lincolndailynews.com 

 

Our staff offers more than 25 years of experience in the automotive industry.

Greyhound Lube

At the corner of Woodlawn and
Business 55

No Appointments Necessary

Previous article

Links to the arts in Logan County

Back to top


 

News | Sports | Business | Rural Review | Teaching & Learning | Home and Family | Tourism | Obituaries

Community | Perspectives | Law & Courts | Leisure Time | Spiritual Life | Health & Fitness | Teen Scene
Calendar | Letters to the Editor