Copenhagen Saxophone Quartet, Italian Baroque Plus, Wigmore Hall, 19 July 2008

Janie likes a bit of sax. So a quartet of saxophonists playing Italian Baroque at the Wigmore hall seemed right up our street.

At the time of writing, I have had a more recent sax quartet experience – click here – having retained only a vague memory of having seen a sax quartet before. This Copenhagen Saxophone Quartet experience was it.

Judging from their website activities page – click here – this appearance at the Wigmore Hall might have been the end of the story for this troupe, even if at the time of booking it might have seemed like a big break near their beginning.

The concert does have an instant encore listing, though, which I am delighted to link here, although (at the time of writing) I am the only person to confess to having been at the concert. I think there were quite a few of us in, but perhaps not the packed Saturday night the Wig and the quartet might have hoped for.

Which is all a shame, as they were rather good, as was their interesting choice of music. I remember them describing their instruments and the pieces they were playing rather well.

I seem to recall that the baroque pieces did more for us than the modern ones. I also recall feeling that saxophone might not be the ideal instrument for baroque music – all sentiments that returned to me when I saw the Ferio Quartet at SJSS in December 2016 – click here.

Anyway, this concert got us all relaxed and suitably prepared for the following day’s battle playing cricket at Bentley.

BBC Proms Lunchtime Concert, Victoria & Albert Museum, 17 August 1998

Victoria & Albert Museum by Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0

We took a Monday off work to enjoy a lunchtime concert at the V&A, then meander around that space and then go to the evening Prom at the Royal Albert hall.

This was the lunchtime concert:

  • Francesco Gasparini – Quanto sei penosa
  • Arcangelo Corelli – 12 Trio Sonatas, Op 1 No. 9 in G major
  • Innocenzo Fede – Bellezze voi siete
  • Innocenzo Fede – Sei pur dolce
  • Innocenzo Fede – Violin Sonata in D minor
  • Alessandro Scarlatti – Correa nel seno amato

London Baroque was the chamber orchestra, with Charles Medlam leading and Catherine Bott beautifully belting the soprano bits.

Nice. Here is a link to the BBC stub for this concert.

To be clear we really enjoyed the concert and indeed our whole day.