The last weekend of April was the climax of the musical season in Sedona, with performances from the Red Rocks Music Festival, Piano on the Rocks, the Sedona Symphony and, finally, Chamber Music Sedona, which rounded off the musical year by hosting saxophonist and composer Steven Banks and pianist Xak Bjerken at the Sedona Performing Arts Center on Sunday, April 28.
“I really like stealing music from the oboe,” Banks joked as the pair prepared to tackle Camille Saint-Saen’s Oboe Sonata in D Major, which, he noted, is commonly borrowed by saxophone players, as the soprano sax has a similar range to that of the oboe. The opening movement combined elegance and liveliness, with incredible fluid runs from Banks, and this sensation carried over into the second movement, which felt like a late summer’s afternoon down by the river.
The sax took long soaring flights accented by the piano, and the piano made a sound like water over round rocks. In the third movement, marked molto allegretto, the sprightliness of the music was reinforced by the way Banks was essentially dancing with his instrument. In effect, it was a lively conversation between two dramatic friends who also happened to be birds.
The duo then embarked on Robert Schumann’s “Fantasiestücke,” originally written for clarinet and piano. “This piece is widely stolen,” Banks chuckled as they proceeded to do just that. In the beginning of the piece, the piano set the stage with a portrait of a young Romantic poet melting himself with emotion, over which the alto sax was both sorrowful and flower-sweet. Things picked up in the second movement, which was a pleasant dance between the two instruments that made it clear how well-integrated Banks and Bjerken’s teamwork was. With the sax in the wind role, it sounded turn-of-the-century America rather than 19th-century Saxony. As for the final movement, it was more melodically-consistent than its predecessors, with some sharp saxophone thrusts and a brisk finish.
Next on the program was the Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano by self-taught American composer Paul Creston, whose works, though largely snubbed by the modernists, nevertheless warrant serious reconsideration if Banks and Bjerken’s performance was any indication. Creston gave the opening tempo for this sonata as “with vigor,” and it blasted right off with plenty of vigor, briefly borrowing a famous Tchaikovsky phrase. There were repeated solo passages for the piano, rich with dark, tragic chords, from which moodiness the alto sax kept rescuing it and bringing it back to good humor. Banks was dancing again — why is saxophone music so often inherently happy? The movement ended on a sudden abrupt high note that left the listeners up in midair wondering what would happen next.
What did happen next was a gentle second movement with the piano continuing to question the sax and the sax reassuring it as the debate grew in intensity with another sharp finish. This was succeeded by a rapid dashing interplay in the final section as the instrumentalists toyed with each other. Banks, it should be noted, also played the entire first half of the concert without a score.
The second half of the concert started with a fascinating opportunity for musical comparison when Banks and Bjerken launched into Maurice Ravel’s “Mother Goose Suite,” which the Sedona Symphony had performed in its full orchestration just a few weeks before. Their version began with a bit of role reversal, with the sax being the more probing partner and the piano expressing confidence, although then they both went for a saunter in the woods. Somehow the full vivacity of the orchestral version did not come across in the duet, except for the third movement, in which the sax described an admirably-rendered merry mandarin over the odd dissonances of the piano. It also included a lot of very clever playing from both artists; Banks even made his sax sound like a trumpet at one point.
The fifth movement played both instrumentalists against each other with an air of extreme urgency, the sax high, the trumpet low, before finishing softly, and that softness carried over into the final section, in which the sax played at being the breeze rippling the surface of a lake before growing to fiery flashing glory.
The duo finished off the afternoon with Banks’ own composition “Come As You Are,” a setting of four spirituals dedicated to the composer’s mother and sisters. “Lift My Eyes” began with a mournfulness that yielded to fierce joy, led by the mellow voice of the tenor sax, not unmixed with trepidation, that carried on to a simple solo passage ending in a flourish. Banks aptly described “Times of the Storm” as an “Afro-Cuban anxiety-filled scherzo,” and it was mostly frenzy with a quick mood change at the end to elegance that also required Bjerken to make some interesting moves, reaching inside the body of the piano to fiddle with the strings directly. The piano led the way into “Strength of My Life” with a gradual sadness, against which the sax offered a modicum of consolation although it had issues of its own. In the final part, “Lift My Hands,” the sax was warm and affectionate, pushing away the initial ominousness of the opening without entirely defeating it, and the piece finished strongly but without firm resolution. It certainly bore out Banks’ statement that he does not find it easy to write happy music.
Next Up
At intermission, Artistic Director Nick Canellakis announced the lineup for the coming season. The December show will feature Grammy-winning classical guitarist Jason Vieaux, who will be followed in January by clarinetist David Shifrin and the Miro String Quartet in a Benny Goodman-themed concert. In February, piano duo Alessio Bax and Lucille Chung will perform. March will see the arrival of pianist Wu Han and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and the series will conclude in April with the Pinchas Zuckerman Trio. Canellakis, who is himself an accomplished cellist, performed at two of Chamber Music’s events this season and will make a guest appearance with the Sedona Symphony in the autumn.
