Classical Music | Music for Saxophone

Premier saxophonist Eugene Rousseau listened to them across a lifetime of concert-going. He came to love them, too, for the warmth they cast, for the pleasures they offered a listener. Always on the lookout for worthy repertoire, he determined that clarinetists should not have a monopoly over this exquisite music, happily recognizing that precedent was at work in his favor: Brahms himself had already set his clarinet compositions for viola, too.

Says Rousseau: "I recall my performances of Brahms when, as a college student, I played clarinet. The music is nothing short of magical. I began to wonder about how to return to that music on the instrument that became my life's work. Using history, I found it easy to convince myself to make the effort. There's always a lag, I remembered, between the invention of an instrument and the development of its repertoire.   This selection of from  CD JDR2272, a Jeanne digital recording "BRAHMS - Eugene Rousseau, saxophone, Michal Kanka, cello, Jaromir Klepac, piano.