The French composer Jacques Ibert wrote the Concertino da camera in 1935 for the saxophone pioneer Sigurd Rascher, who became the first soloist ever to play a saxophone concerto at Carnegie Hall when the New York Philharmonic gave the local premiere in 1939. This gem by Ibert appeared alongside other French saxophone repertoire when Branford Marsalis joined Orpheus in 2000 to record Creation, a landmark CD release and the start of a partnership that keeps getting stronger in its third decade. 
 
By the 1930s, the sax was firmly associated with jazz and dance bands, and Ibert’s score revels in the tension between “serious” and “popular” music inherent in a saxophone concerto, like how the dissonant and ominous introduction releases into a bright and bouncy sax theme. In the Larghetto section, the strings pulse on chords that use the extended tones of jazz harmony, and the cadenza within the final section takes advantage of that quasi-improvised tradition to put the sax’s agility on display, including visits to the extended “altissimo” range at the top of the register, a technique that Rascher developed and encouraged composers to exploit. 

© 2023 Aaron Grad