Sonatas for Saxophone and Piano by Arno Bornkamp / Ivo Janssen

Arno Bornkamp / Ivo Janssen

Sonatas for Saxophone and Piano

Format: CD
Label: Globe
UPC: 8711525604902
Catnr: GLO 6049
Release date: 19 August 2002

1 CD

Label
Globe

UPC
8711525604902

Catalogue number
GLO 6049

Release date
19 August 2002

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

The album Saxophone Sonatas was first released in 1990. After a slow start, it became one of their best sold albums. Years after selling out, record stores still received orders for this recording. Now the album is making its comeback and still the album won't have to fear any competition. The performances of sonatas by composers such as Paul Hindemith, Jacques Charpentier and Edison Denisov are still as beautiful and powerful as always, and the remarkably good audio quality hides the fact that this recording is somewhat older than usual.

Saxophone player Arno Boskamp is a modern virtuoso, who is familiar with contemporary as traditional repertory. Since his debute in as soloist in 1982, he gave more than 250 concerts, many of which consisted of new works dedicated to him by contemporary composers. Bornkamp is also part of the Aurelia Saxophonequartet, and together with pianist Ivo Janssen he forms a duo.

Een schitterend album opnieuw te beluisteren
Het album Saxophone Sonatas werd voor het eerst uitgebracht in 1990. Na een langzame start werd het een van hun best verkochte albums. Zelfs nadat het origineel niet meer verkrijgbaar was bleven de bestellingen nog binnenkomen! Nu is het album dus terug van weggeweest, en het is nog steeds een unieke opname die nauwelijks met concurrentie te maken heeft. De uitvoeringen van de sonates voor saxofoon en piano van componisten als Paul Hindemith, Jacques Charpentier en Edison Denisov zijn net zo prachtig en sterk als altijd, en de goede geluidskwaliteit verbergt het feit dat deze opname al wat ouder is.

Saxofonist Arno Bornkamp is een moderne virtuoos, die zich zowel in het hedendaagse als in het traditionele repertoire thuis voelt. Sinds zijn debuut als solist in 1982 heeft hij meer dan 250 concerten uitgevoerd, zowel de belangrijkste werken uit het saxofoonrepertoire als aan hem opgedragen nieuwe composities. Daarnaast maakt Bornkamp deel uit van het Aurelia Saxofoonkwartet en vormt hij een duo met pianist Ivo Janssen, met wie hij de werken op dit album uitvoert.

Artist(s)

Ivo Janssen

Since his debut in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam in 1988 pianist Ivo Janssen (Venlo, 1963) performs regularly in the Netherlands, and also in Germany, France, Italy, Australia and the USA. He has performed with musicians such as Heinrich Schiff, Nobuko Imai, Han de Vries and Charlotte Margiono.
For Globe, Ivo Janssen made a number of recordings including Brahms, Prokofiev, Chopin Preludes op. 28 and Hindemith’s Ludus Tonalis, which the Hindemith Institute considered to be the best recording by far of this work.
In 1994 he started a series of concerts which will eventually include performances and recordings of the complete keyboard works by J.S. Bach. In February 1998 the first album in this series was released, on his own label VOID Classics, which was especially started for this purpose. After recordings of the Goldberg Variations, Toccatas, French and English Suites, Partitas, the Well-tempered Clavier, and much more, the cycle was completed with a recording of The Art of Fugue in January 2007. His toccata! project, that combines Bach’s toccatas with toccatas especially written by a number of contemporary Dutch composers such as Louis Andriessen, Michiel Borstlap, Leo Samama and Christina Viola Oorebeek was received with much enthusiasm, in the Netherlands as well as abroad.
Since 2014 Ivo Janssen plays recitals in Janssenbeton, music below decks, a concert hall built by himself in a concrete ammunition barge in the centre of Amsterdam. However, he has decided to stop performing for the time being in the summer of 2019.

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Arno Boskamp

Composer(s)

Paul Hindemith

Paul Hindemith studied violin at the Dr Hoch's Konservatorium of Frankfurt and played from 1915 to 1923 in the Frankfurt opera. From 1921 to 1929 he played viola in the Amar Quarter, where he was advocate for contemporary music. Throughout the years, he held multiple positions as teachers, but he remained most popular as a violist. During the Second Worldwar he fleed to the USA and was given the American nationality in 1948, Later, he returned to Europe to teach at the university of Zürich.
His use rhythm, called "Motorik" by himself (a combination of Motor and Musik) is piercing, and at times even tormenting. It echoes the arrival of industralisation and the motor, as Hindemith opposes any form of sentimentality, psychology or personality. This way, Hinemith created shrill, neoclassicistic music (Gebrauchsmusik, music with a social or political aim). His body of works is quite extensive, with more than 100 compositions in all kinds of genres. Even though he was an advocate of contemporary music, he never felt affiliated with dodecaphony. He wrote several theoretic treatises, among which his Unterweisung im Tonsatz from 1937 in which Hindemith offers several systems in which the tension between intervals, harmony and melody is analysed and elevated into a compositional technique.

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Paul Creston

Florent Schmitt

Alfred Desenclos

Jacques Charpentier

Edison Denisov

The Russian composer Edison Denisov was part of the so-called nonconformist or alternative division of Soviet music. Before deciding to become a composer, he studied mathematics. This may explain the mathematic elements in many of his works, such as changes of meter, tuplets and attempts to notate rubato (freedom of rhythm) exactly. He also made use of dodecaphonic elements. During his study Denisov examined works of composers like Debussy, Mahler, Boulez and Stockhausen, which were difficult to obtain in the Soviet Union at that time. He also wrote a series of analytic articles on contemporary compositional techniques and experimented as a composer in order to discover his own style. Denisov gained international recognition after several successful performances of his cycle Le soleil...

The Russian composer Edison Denisov was part of the so-called nonconformist or alternative division of Soviet music. Before deciding to become a composer, he studied mathematics. This may explain the mathematic elements in many of his works, such as changes of meter, tuplets and attempts to notate rubato (freedom of rhythm) exactly. He also made use of dodecaphonic elements.
During his study Denisov examined works of composers like Debussy, Mahler, Boulez and Stockhausen, which were difficult to obtain in the Soviet Union at that time. He also wrote a series of analytic articles on contemporary compositional techniques and experimented as a composer in order to discover his own style.
Denisov gained international recognition after several successful performances of his cycle Le soleil des Incas for soprano and chamber ensemble. However, the Union of Soviet Composers criticized the piece for its western influences, and began to ban performances of his works in the Soviet Union.

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