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The five members of the Calefax Reed Quintet have been dedicating themselves to performing works written for the oboe, clarinet, saxophone, bass clarinet and bassoon for more than 25 years. Since the repertoire for their combination is scarce, they’ve had to be creative when it comes to finding music to play.
“We all five make arrangements for the group’s lineup of reed instruments, but Jelte (Althuis) and in particular Raaf (Hekkema) are the most active,” explained bassoonist Alban Wesly) via e-mail from Amsterdam. “I think I’m not far off when I say that Raaf alone made half of the several hundred arrangements that we have collected in the past 26 years of the quintet’s existence.”
Arrangements of works by Rameau and Debussy that have been in the quintet’s repertoire for years as well as new arrangements of pieces by Gershwin and Weill will be part of the Calefax Reed Quintet’s performance with the Los Alamos Concert Association in Los Alamos on Sunday afternoon. “We are especially eager to find out what our American audiences think of our version of Gershwin’s classic ‘An American in Paris,’” Wesly added.
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If you go WHAT: Los Alamos Concert Association presents the Calefax Reed Quintet WHEN: 4 p.m. Sunday WHERE: Duane Smith Auditorium, 1300 Diamond Drive, Los Alamos COST: $30 in advance at www.losalamosconcert.org, CB Fox and Smith’s in Los Alamos and Nicholas Potter Bookseller in Santa Fe; $35 at the door. CONTACT: 505-662-9000 |
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When Wesly, Althuis (bass clarinet), Hakkema (saxophone), Ivar Berix (clarinet) and Oliver Boekhoorn(oboe) started playing together in high school in 1985, they struggled to find music for their ensemble. “There were three ways to do this: to compose, ask others to compose and to make arrangements,” said Wesly. “Today, we have collected almost 100 original compositions for the group and several hundred arrangements ranging from early Renaissance music to music by Gershwin.”
Keyboard music benefits greatly from arrangements, Wesly explained, because reed instruments add a lot of “color” to the music. “The slightly different colors of the wind instruments just make it easier for listeners to follow and understand the musical story of a piece,” he said.
In some cases, the quintet plays arrangements they call “recompositions.” With a keyboard piece, for example, the arranger tries to imagine how the composer would have written down the piece’s musical thoughts for oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet, saxophone and bassoon. A Calefax Reed Quintet concert usually features both formal arrangements that primarily stick note-by-note to the original music as well as recompositions.
The quintet’s current concert season includes a performance with mezzo-soprano Christianne Stotijn at the Prinsengracht concert in the Netherlands, a program with the Quatuor Danel quartet from Brussels featuring a new work by Belgian composer Jean-Luc Fafchamps and a “Roaring Twenties” concert with mezzo-soprano Cora Burggraaf .
The group has released 17 CDs on the German label MDG as well as for their own label, RIOJA Records.
