CCMusic.com

WERGO is proud to present a further album by Enjott Schneider. In "Clair Obscur - Colors of Saxophones", extreme contrasts play a defining role: beautiful and ugly, loud and soft, bright and dark - all these qualities are brought to life by the Berlin saxophone quartet, clair-obscur. The musical spectrum ranges from Old Masters to the extreme fringes of contemporary music. Cri Muet for saxophone and orchestra brings together tender lyricism and machine-like rhythms, along with Beethoven quotations and contemporary atonal harmonies. As Times Go Bye for alto, tenor, and baritone saxophone plays with the concept of time using motivic material from Johann Sebastian Bach. In Pavane, old and new meet in the contrasting sounds of saxophone and English Horn as well as in references to the music of the Spanish Renaissance composer Luis de Milán. In Berlin Punk, Enjott Schneider attempts to transpose the attitude and character of Punk culture into a symphonic setting. Rough, loud, dirty, insolent, and aggressive, yet also lyrical, poetic, and yearning: this is the impressive emotional range that is radically achieved in the virtuoso performances by the members of clair-obscur.