contre bruit

This 2005 double-disc from the Aurelia Saxophone Quartet on Challenge Classics has its obvious quirks: Die Kunst der Fuge, as played on soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone saxes, is guaranteed to sound a little outré; and the fifteen contemporary works which follow it, riffing in various ways on J. S. Bach’s monument to fugue, may well run counter to expectations. Not that these unusual offerings are intended to be jokes — the level of musicality in Aurelia’s rendition of Bach’s contrapuntal masterpiece is astonishingly high, and the contemporary meditations and take-offs are emotionally compelling as often as they are witty or aesthetically challenging. The second disc of modern pieces – by an international symposium of composers asked for their own reflections on Bach’s polyphonic compendium — may be best appreciated by connoisseurs of jazz and avant-garde chamber music, since the expressions and techniques of the pieces are decidedly more adventurous than imitative of the late Baroque. by Blair Sanderson