As Buffalo knows from long experience with our own Amherst Saxophone Quartet, there is nothing a saxophone quartet cannot do when the musicians set their minds to it. The very nature of the group’s sound seems to change along with the various musical styles. In an arrangement of Charles Ives’ string quartet “From the Salvation Army” (bet Ives never imagined the thrift-shop connotations that title would have), the Ancia Saxophone Quartet sounds like a wind band from centuries past. In the abstract, jumpy movements of Jennifer Higdon’s 25-minute “Short Stories” as well as in Michael Torke’s undulating “July,” the group sounds avant-garde and electronic. Music by Fred Sturm, David Bixler and Carleton Macy help round out this bargain-priced romp. Sturm’s whimsical arrangement of “Jelly Roll” Morton’s “Black Bottom Stomp” makes the Ancia sound like the Barroom Buzzards.

For the second time in a few months Naxos devotes a CD to Tomas Bretón, best known for his opera La Dolores and zarzuela La verbena de la Paloma.The earlier collection (8.570713) included an arrangement for piano trio of the “Polo” that appears here in full orchestral garb as the second movement of the suite Escenas andaluzas.

This tunefully attractive piece of highly perfumed exoticism and alluring Spanish rhythms deserves wider appreciation. The performance here may lack the magic of Ataulfo Argenta’s 1950s recording (Medici Classics);but Miguel Roa is more successful in his delicate delineation of the other piece of “alhambrismo” in the collection, the single-movement Enfa Alhambra.

These items have been recorded in various forms previously, including historic recordings by Enrique Fernandez Arbos recently reissued on Dutton. However, the various operatic excerpts offer welcome novelty. The Prelude to La Dolores will already be familiar from the Decca recording with Domingo but those to Guzman el bueno and Los amantes de Teruel are impressively developed symphonic pieces that make excellent additions to the catalogue…this is a collection well worth acquiring.

If I had to choose a word, especially for the already fairly well-known Third (1972–7), it would be ecstatic. There is a certain tension in these pieces that border on the rapturous, and even though the melodic development is not of the sonata-form type, the soaring lines and blissful choral passages—using the hymn Ave Maria Stella, Hail, Star of the Sea, and Rainer Maria Rilke’s Sing, My Heart, of Unknown Gardens Poured in Glass—give us a non-linear presentation of the words in a way that faithfully graces the music. The Seventh Symphony is far more recent (2004–6), and though structurally more noteworthy, at least to these ears, its sonorities play an even greater significance due to the presence of 14 tuned toms, which are wonderfully scored as a sort of interior repeated motif that surfaces with slightly different orchestration each time, beautifully placed among basses and cellos particularly for a memorable event. The only surprise for me was the rather drop-off ending. Though no accelerando is ever made to a climax, this denouement cuts us off rather suddenly without warning.

There are moments of great beauty in both of these works, and I am sure further hearings will reveal many secrets. This is music is modern to be sure, but of a type where real communicability is possible for those willing to give it a go.  

Where has this beautiful, rhapsodic music been hiding? Picture Grieg having taken harmony lessons with Delius (and perhaps Cyril Scott on the side), while looking at, sampling, but ultimately not assimilating late Scriabin. That rather glibly characterizes the music of Swedish composer Henning Mankell (1868-1930). He primarily wrote for piano in a skillful, idiomatic fashion that effortlessly fuses poetry and virtuosity into ingenuous patterns that always keep your ears alert. He writes no memorable tunes upon which to hang your hat, which probably explains why you can jump around from work to work without noticing any changes, as well as why few pianists champion Mankell in concert. However, Anna Christensson's well-schooled, sensitive fingers and innate musicality serve this repertoire wonderfully well, and so does the fine engineering. A real treat for lovers of piano rarities.