Search - Anders Koppel, Nicolae Moldoveanu, Odense Symphony Orchestra :: Anders Koppel: Works for Saxophone and Orchestra

If You Like Jazz AND Classical Music ...

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 10/26/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"... then this CD is for you.



Anders Koppel is a member of an instensely musical Danish family. His father was the noted composer Herman D. Koppel and his son Benjamin is the superb saxophone soloist on this CD. The album contains two concertos and a delicious three-minute morsel called 'Swan Song for Alto Saxophone, Harp and Strings.' I'd suggest you start with this latter. If you don't fall for it I would suggest that you have a heart of stone. It is a perfect jewel of a ballad, originally written as a theme song for a Danish radio adaptation of a Selma Lagerlöf story and then rescored for Benjamin Koppel's sweet saxophone with a shimmering string accompaniment. When I first heard this track I immediately put it on repeat and must have listened to it five times in a row, some of that time trying to understand from a technical perspective why it works so well. I don't have an answer. But I know it effects me viscerally and after many more hearings that effect has not worn off. Try Track 9 here at Amazon and I think you'll see what I mean.



It's a little difficult to describe Koppel's style in these concerti but he clearly takes his lead from the fact that for most of its history the saxophone has been an instrument used in popular music and more particularly in jazz. Koppel's music uses jazz harmonies and turns of melody but dresses them in extremely skillfully handled classical instrumentation and classic concerto form. He has a very developed rhythmic sense and much of the pleasure from listening to these works is their rhythmic inventiveness. (Also, the Odense Symphony has a gangbusters percussion section!) Soloist Benjamin Koppel, playing soprano and alto in the first concerto and alto in the second, is an exuberant and inventive player with a real talent for jazz improvisation; indeed he is part of a jazz/pop/rock group called Mad Cows Sing. I can't say enough about his contribution to the success of these performances. The notes suggest that there are many opportunities in the score for the soloist to improvise and instead of the usual cadenzas one one expects what we have here are jazz licks, sometimes unaccompanied, sometimes with jazzy chordal accompaniment. The music is completely tonal but not harmonically timid; it sometimes goes places that one simply wouldn't expect but on relistening those exciting explorations sound more and more inevitable. A kind of 'oh, of course!'. Anders Koppel has a marvelous lyrical gift, the ability to compose melodies that stick.



The excellent Odense Symphony is under the direction of Romanian conductor Nicolae Moldoveanu. Both he and the orchestra seem to have Koppel's style well in their bloodstream. Recorded sound is excellent.



One final word: this is not crossover music in the usual sense. These are classical concerti written in a somewhat modified but clearly informed jazz idiom. They are modern relatives of Gershwin's Concerto in F, or more recently the piano sonatas of the marvelous Russian composer, Nikolai Kapustin; if you know those, you'll have some idea of the quality of these works.



Strongly recommended.



Scott Morrison"