Aurelia Saxophone Quartet - French Saxophones - 25 Years Jubilee (2009)

At the beginning of the 1990s the Aurelia Saxophone Quartet made two very successful CDs dedicated to French music for the label “Etcetera”, and they are now being made available as a set by Challenge Classics. The ensemble, then 10 years young, had already made a name for itself with a number of daring arrangements. The string quartets by Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy drew the most attention. While developing its interpretation, the group wanted to make certain of its ground so the members consulted with such renowned string players as Stefan Metz, cellist in the Orlando String Quartet, and Raphael Hillyer, former viola player of the Juilliard String Quartet. On this first CD they also included an arrangement of the Roussel Quartet in D Major.

A year later, they recorded French music that was composed specifically for saxophone quartet. The pieces by Florent Schmitt, Jean Françaix, Gabriel Pierné, Eugène Bozza, Alfred Desenclos and Jean Rivier were all written around the middle of the twentieth century and form the basis of the saxophone quartet repertoire. These pieces were each composed at the request of the famous French saxophone pioneer Marcel Mule (1901-2001). In 1928, Mule and three colleagues from the Garde Républicaine de Paris formed the Quatuor de Saxophones de la Garde Républicaine.