BRANFORD MARSALIS — Romances For Saxophone (review)

BRANFORD MARSALIS — Romances For Saxophone album cover Album · 1986 · Third Stream Buy this album from MMA partners
2.5/5 ·
js
This isn’t a bad record, nor is it a particularly great one either. As a legitimate selection for a lover of classical music it probably fails, but as nice semi-classical music for backgrounds and casual listening it probably works just fine. Mostly this is a selection of late 19th and early 20th century lyrical pieces re-orchestrated by Michael Colombier to include Branford Marsalis’ saxophone as lead melody. Branford’s playing is great as usual, and his feel for modern classical music isn’t bad, but sometimes it sounds like he and the orchestra are not really meshing correctly. It could just be the mix of the album that is causing this problem, possibly Branford is mixed just a little too upfront for the sound of a classical recording.

When I first played this record, the opening cut ‘L’ Isle Joyeuse’ seemed to really amplify the problem of bad synching between the sax and orchestra and I assumed the whole record would be subtly clumsy and obtuse. Fortunately, as the album played on I noticed other cuts which had more straight forward melodies seemed to be more successful. Particularly nice is Villa-Lobos’ ’Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5’, Marsalis’ confidence with this one really shows and the piece comes off as more cohesive than many of the others. The simple reading of Satie’s ‘Gymnopedie No.3’ is also nice and even conveys more emotional weight than the often tentative performances found elsewhere on here. Its possible that they didn’t bother to rehearse enough to really nail down the pieces that have a more abstract ebb and flow between the sax and orchestra.

This record is a nice collection of expressive melodies played by a master of the saxophone, but don’t listen too closely hoping for a classical masterpiece.
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