Kroumata Percussion Ensemble, Raschèr Saxophone Quartet

Two of the world’s foremost groups of their kind, Kroumata and The Raschèr Saxophone Quartet, meet on a CD from Caprice. Together in two works expressly written for them, Sofia Gubaidulina’s In Erwartung and Anders Nilsson’s KRASCH, and separately in Hans Kox’s The Three Chairs for saxophone, and Daniel Börtz’s Picchettato for five percussionists.

The Kroumata Percussion Ensemble and the Raschèr Saxophone Quartet have more in common than one might have at first imagined: both are firmly committed to expanding a repertoire for their instruments and to encouraging many of today’s leading composers to write new music, much of it dedicated to one or other of the two groups.

Sofia Gubaidulina is one of the most widely known composers of our time. In Erwartung is an attempt to find possible meeting points and to create a dialogue between the different sounds which the two groups represent. Waiting and meeting are the theme, a kind of underlying point of departure, in which Gubaidulina has availed herself both the similarities and the dissimilarities of musical expression.

Anders Nilsson, himself originally an improvisation artist and pianist with his roots in rock’n roll and theatre music, “caught” Bartok, and through the studies of Berg and Schönberg he came to the composition class at the Royal University College of Music, Stockholm. Anders Nilsson’s KRASCH, is a powerful rhythmical and vigorous work, written in a “rocky” way and a kind of reaction against “stodgy” music: rhythm is a basic prerequisite of communication. The piece also includes a tape-recorded part, which expands the acoustic texture, forming an outward, sounding, musical space.