I'm currently learning this piece and I was looking for any tips, techniques, notes, or advice you could give me on it. Any certain musical preferences you have or any "have tos" on any parts of the piece or the piece in general? ANY advice you could offer would be great. Thanks
Great piece! One of my favs to perform back in my Concert Saxophone days It's fairly straight forward technically speaking although there will definitely be parts you need to shed. The tough part (as with a lot of stuff), is the musicality and the phrasing. Some of the sections are phrased fairly obviously, but others not so.
One section that comes to mind is the 2nd major section of the piece after the chromatic fury It get's much slower and very lyrical. The phrasing in this section can get tricky.
So my advice would be to make sure that you have your phrases throughout the entire piece clearly marked. Once you have them marked, you can begin to break the piece down and really start to understand where it's going musically as it truly is one of the most lyrical works written for classical saxophone. Also listen for how the sax melody interacts with the orchestral accompaniment. There are so many nuances that are important between the 2 parts. This will also influence your phrasing. Especially when you get into the 3rd and final section.
The thing that helped me the most with this piece is to listen to as many versions, as often as possible. Obviously buying is the best thing for the artist, but you may consider going to the local University and uploading some CD's to your computer.
Probably the best thing you can do in my opinion is to listen to Glazunov's Violin Concerto. The style of the pieces is quite similar and will give you a good idea how to phrase throughout the Saxophone Concerto. I'd also suggest listening to Brahms' Violin Concerto and even Barber's Violin Concerto to an extent.
Use the Barenreiter edition. It has great information, performance suggestions, and multiple cadenza options as they've appeared throughout the history of this work.
I'd be careful about the Barenreiter edition because the opening historical introduction contains a lot of information about the saxophone that isn't historically accurate, particularly relating to its usage in Jazz and its early 19th-century usage. There are also several translation errors to the english edition, that just give a sense that the historical part of this edition was rushed and utilizes many of the same stereotypical saxophone history descriptions we are used to at this point. For a scholarly edition like this that is so interesting musically (the cadenza's, etc.), this was disappointing to see this a few years ago.
I agree with everything in that's been mentioned so far, especially listening. My two favorite recordings of the Glazunov are by John-Edward Kelly and Greg Banaszak. Both of these can be found on Spotify.
It's pretty remarkable how different these two interpretations are, and they should give you some good ideas. Kelly's cadenza is ridiculous, as well. Is it the same one in the Barenreiter edition?
Thank you everyone for your info so far! I would be interested in the Barenreiter version. It sounds more difficult. Is that true? And Merlin, I have not. Could you enlighten me on that fingering?
To clarify, Kelly wrote his own cadenza as he states Sigurd Rascher taught him. The Barenreiter edition does not include this cadenza but rather the original, urtext, and one written by Rascher.
Buenas estoy realizando un gran trabajo sobre el Concierto de Glazunov, hay posibilidad de que me deis todo tipo de información que me sea de ayuda. Gracias. Saludos.
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