With her deep pockets and predilection for French music, the Boston-based amateur saxophonist Elise Hall approached Claude Debussy in 1901 with a commission for a saxophone piece. He took a full decade to deliver the promised score in the form of a Rhapsody for saxophone and piano, and he never got around to fleshing out the notes he made for the orchestration, so that task fell to his colleague Jean Roger-Ducasse, who published a posthumous edition in 1919. Orpheus commissioned Zachary Wadsworth to create this version for a smaller ensemble for their 2021 tour with Branford Marsalis. 

A rhapsody is a loose form that gives composers total freedom to follow their whims. Debussy’s example, within its precise notation, imparts a feeling of improvisation with its slow-moving harmonies and modes that defy the usual patterns of Western tonality. The unaccompanied saxophone solo that follows an unadorned introduction could be mistaken for the ad-libbed elaboration of a jazz player, but it is in fact an essential theme that soon gets echoed by the clarinet and others. The nature of Wadsworth’s arrangement continually draws attention to the individual woodwinds, such that they almost function as co-soloists, like when the oboe and flute trade serpentine melodies based on Debussy’s beloved whole-tone scales. 

© 2023 Aaron Grad