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The following CD's are available on iTunes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Or buy a hard copy of the album Runaway Horses, if you like the feel of a real CD in your hand!

 

Again if you'd rather play the music of The Soviet Saxophone on your CD player then order a CD using PayPal:

 

 

 

Runaway Horses

a metaphor illustrating the spirit of departing from home, making a step beyond tradition; towards the idea of re-interpretation and the search for new grounds in music. In addition it also means that while traveling one gets many new and fresh impressions, which happens in making the voyage of recording this album. With pieces ranging from the Mongolian folk tune Galloping Horse, to the silk and bamboo tune from the south-east China, San Liu, it does feel like being taken by the musicians all through China, and beyond.

A yangchin is a traditional Chinese string instrument, where the strings are hammered with two bamboo sticks. The instrument originally came from Persia, from there it spread to other countries, as Persia is located to the west of China the instrument became known as 'western instrument', or 'yangchin' in Chinese. 

This album presents the collaboration of two musicians interacting inter-culturally, Filip from Holland and Kimho from Hong Kong, China, ech has also worked musically across several cultures. The selected music, mostly influenced by East Asian folk music, combined with the aesthetics of European classical tradition, represents a state of mind in music that reflects a genuine interest to understand others' cultures and their subtle nuances. It is possibly the world's first ever recorded album of Chinese dulcimer (Yangchin) and soprano saxophone duet. The soul of experimentalism is, however, by no means to be taken as deconstructing tradition. Whereas both instruments are not tightly strangled by a particular tradition, the duo lets the music speak for itself. Especially in pieces like Yang Guan Trio and The Saga, different musical traditions are put in such a natural dialogue that the difference between composed music and traditional music becomes rather indistinct, and probably unnecessary to be too clearly defined as well. Also, the overall philosophy of the recording is to maintain the live acoustic quality of the two instruments, including the ambiences and noises which contribute to the natural character of the playing.

 

 

 

The Soviet Saxophone

Filip Davidse, Saxophone       Naomi Tamura, piano

In the former Soviet Union beautiful music was being written for the saxophone and piano. This CD for the first time records these extraordinary pieces. Some of them, like "12 Melancholic Waltzes" haven't been recorded at all before, the cycle was in fact completed to be played by Filip on saxophone by composer Dmitri Smirnov. 

The saxophone was viewed as a 'suspicious' instrument in the former Soviet Union. The reason being that it belonged to the bourgeoisie and was associated with decadent jazz music. For these reasons serious composers did not write 'serious' music for the instrument. As a result there was no development of the instrument and its possibilities in different settings like there was in the West. This changed in the nineteen sixties and seventies, due to a group of young composers in Moscow, among them Dmitri Smirnov, Vladislav Shoot, Nikolai Korndorff and Faradj Karayev. All of these composers were members of the "Association for Contemporary Music" (ACM), a group formed in the seventies in Moscow. These composers felt restrained by the rules and regulations of the Composers Union and tried to find their own way, also by studying the musical developments in the West. The Composers Union was a government agency which controlled all aspects of a composers' life. From housing to the availability of sheet music paper. If a composer marched out of step, his life could be made very difficult by this Union. However these young composers did not want to write in the style of Shostakovich and Prokofiev, composers whose influence was enormous. Which was ironical, because after having suffered a lot of criticism and restraints earlier in their careers their music was now propagated as 'real Soviet music'. The members of the ACM tried to organize their own concerts and publications. They would gather in the flat of one of their members and discuss new works, ideas and developments. Their teacher mentor and friend Edison Denisov was also a part of this. They sought out contact with the West and invited for example the French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez and French saxophonist Jean-Marie Londeix. As the political and economical situation became increasingly unstable towards the end of the eighties, many artist and composers emigrated to the West. Elena Firsova and her husband Dmitri Smirnov (1948) went to England in 1991, as did Vladislav Shoot (1941). Vladimir Korndorff (1947-2001) emigrated to Canada. In this respect the life of Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) was just the opposite. After having started his career in Russia he left for Europe, and lived for quite some time in the West. However he returned for good to Russia in 1934, thinking he would be more successful there. He would only find out how difficult life really was under the communists. He wrote his Flute Sonata op.94 in 1943, during the second World War. Later, in collaboration with David Oistrakh, he transcribed it for violin. Maybe because, as famous pianist Sviatoslav Richter suggested: "flautists seemed in no great hurry to perform it". Prokofiev died on the same day as Stalin (March 5 1953), causing his death to go unnoticed for some time.

 

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