Many of classikON’s volunteer Ambassador team are professional musicians in their own right. This week Ambassador and harpsichordist Peter Hagen brings his insights regarding his new project involving harpsichord and… saxophone. Intriguing! Over to you Peter…
Ton Koopman the great Dutch harpsichordist, was once asked by a woman in provincial Netherlands, if playing baroque music on the piano was OK. He replied, “Of course, and you could also play Bach on the koto and the banjo”. Perhaps with this in mind we can understand the idea behind the numerous 17th and 18th century collections of music that were written for “diverse instruments”. This open-ended approach to making music was a fairly standard manner of bringing music to the average home musician in the 17th century where for example Italian collections of music were written for diversi stromenti. The Couperin concerts in the early 18th century note in the foreword that they could be played on anything and even played on harpsichord alone. This practical approach ensured that the music was played by anyone with a score and an instrument to hand. In addition composers re-wrote music for other instruments sometimes transposing up or down to suit the different ranges. Editions of music saying ‘for oboe or violin’ were common as well as those mentioning ‘for bassoon or violoncello’. In simple terms composers were effectively saying “here is some music, so go and play it”.
As such I had no problems in collaborating with Niels Bijl a celebrated Dutch saxophonist recently moved to Victoria, Australia. His infectious enthusiasm and past collaborations with a recorder player, then an accordion player ensured that his flexible approach to music making, matched or possibly exceeded mine.
My tradition of crossing boundaries goes back to 2000 – 2006 when I worked extensively with Anne Norman, a shakuhachi player. We worked with the Melbourne Composers League and recorded music especially composed for us by Dindy Vaughn, in a celebrated CD that was runner up in the 2006 Australian classical music awards called “Up the Creek”.
Getting back to working with saxophone; I had a few conversations with Niels where we just chilled and talked about ourselves and our musical lives. We eventually downed coffee cups and Indian food and actually played with the two first pieces being a Vivaldi oboe sonata that Niels had played with an accordion player and a cello sonata op 8 no 1 by De Fesch which I thought might go well with the baritone saxophone. We both loved the results particularly because Niels can adjust his sound so well so as to not blast me out of existence. This balance problem was of course the first thing that came to mind before we started playing, but we approached the rehearsal with a ‘can do’ attitude. We have now performed our first programme three times and will perform once more on 16 March in a chamber music festival in Prahan, in Melbourne’s inner east.
It is enough to say that I enjoy playing and performing with sensitive musicians who love the same music as I do. Whilst actively searching for accurate historical performance practices on historical instruments and performing this way, I am not bound by performing only baroque music, and perhaps arrangements of more modern music and even some contemporary pieces written for harpsichord and saxophone might just come to pass in our future concerts. I hope even the purists will come to accept that this in some strange way is not just acceptable but desirable, that we play music and present it in different ways. Because, make no mistake about this, we will continue playing together.
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