Four works written in 2014 and 2015 for the Trio Accanto, a group of saxophone, piano and percussion, by Georges Aperghis, Rolf Riehm, Johannes Schöllhorn and Stefan Prins. All are first recordings. When the trio was formed, the combination had no repertoire worth mentioning. This disc shows how its unusual sound has freed the imagination of composers, who treat the trio as a single sounding body.
The idea for the trio came from the saxophonist Marcus Weiss and the pianist Yukiko Sugawara on the way home from the Witten festival in 1992. With the percussionist Christian Dierstein the group gave its first concert at Donaueschingen on 15 October 1994. Nicolas Hodges took over the piano in 2013 and plays on this recording. The trio has given close to a hundred premieres. The four composers span three generations: Riehm was born in 1937, Aperghis in 1945, Schöllhorn in 1962 and Prins in 1979. The recordings are productions of SWR.
Aperghis's Trio Funambule, for alto saxophone, piano and percussion, is a dance on a tightrope. It moves in constant balancing acts, now staggering, now hesitant, and the three instruments always remain separate partners. It was first played by the trio at the Eclat festival in Stuttgart on 6 February 2014. In Riehm's Basar Aleppo oder Die Straße nach Tyros, for tenor saxophone, piano, marimba and CD playback, the musicians also appear as people on stage, and the subtitle "Klangszenen" points to its theatrical character. Schöllhorn's Sinaïa 1916, for baritone saxophone, piano and percussion, sounds as if from a remote, legendary past. The trio moves together in slow, steady steps.
The longest piece, at over 22 minutes, is Mirror Box (Flesh+Prosthesis #3) by Prins. It gives the players a set of technical extensions: soprano and tenor saxophone, prepared piano and MIDI keyboard, percussion, pre-recorded material, samples and live electronics. Its sounding body is the most eccentric on the disc.
CD, Wergo WER 7358 2, released in 2016 in the label's Trio Accanto series.