Works for solo cello often include arrangements of pieces in other media due to the overall sparsity of originals for the cello, especially in chamber music, but this release by cellist
Alban Gerhardt
and the
Alliage Quintet
is something else again. The arrangements, by various composers, are for cello, saxophone quartet, and piano. This could easily have turned out as simply bizarre, especially inasmuch as the composers had their own individual approaches, yet each arrangement is fully thought through, and the pieces differ in the degree of remaking they undergo. The result is that one really hears some of the music in a new way. The most thorough reimagining is that applied by
Stefan Malzew
to
Gershwin
's
Rhapsody in Blue
, which, alone among the works on the album, gets a
new title
, which is also used for the album as a whole.
Malzew
freely distributes sections of the piano part among the cello and the saxophones. Also striking is the
Vivaldi
Cello Concerto in A minor, RV 418
, where the saxophones provide a texture sufficiently distant from that of the original work as to create a mysterious flavor. The works by
Falla
and
Shostakovich
, not for the cello originally, are a bit more straightforward, but really everything on the program hangs together, and
Gerhardt
's idea never wears out its welcome. The readings by the
are warm and atmospheric, having the effect of a wash of sound, and the whole thing is beautifully captured by
Hyperion
's engineers in the Deutsche Kammermusiksaal in Cologne. An essential find for saxophonists and those who love them, this release hit classical best-seller charts in the spring of 2022. ~ James Manheim