History
Although invented in the early 1840s, the saxophone was still fairly new and unfamiliar in Glazunov's day; it remained untouched for a long time as it was considered "middle class". However, Glazunov was enthralled by the sound of the saxophone: a new timbre in the musical world.
The work premiered in Nyköping, Sweden, on 25 November 1934, with Sigurd Raschèr, a famous German saxophonist, as soloist. It is Raschèr who is credited for bringing about the concerto's composition. He hounded Glazunov for a saxophone concerto, so much so that the composer wrote to a colleague that he had started the piece in March "under the influences of attacks rather than requests from the Danish (sic) saxophonist named Sigurd Rascher". He completed the work in June 1934.
Glazunov almost certainly never heard his Saxophone Concerto publicly performed, as the first Paris performance of the work did not occur until after his death. He made no mention in his letters of any collaboration with another composer on the concerto. However, in 1936, the publishing company made an addition to the piano reduction: they added A. Petiot as a second composer.
Read more about this topic: Saxophone Concerto (Glazunov)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It gives me the greatest pleasure to say, as I do from the bottom of my heart, that never in the history of the country, in any crisis and under any conditions, have our Jewish fellow citizens failed to live up to the highest standards of citizenship and patriotism.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)
“Three million of such stones would be needed before the work was done. Three million stones of an average weight of 5,000 pounds, every stone cut precisely to fit into its destined place in the great pyramid. From the quarries they pulled the stones across the desert to the banks of the Nile. Never in the history of the world had so great a task been performed. Their faith gave them strength, and their joy gave them song.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)