Recital: Lila Searls '23, Saxophone

David Amram | Trio for Tenor Saxophone, Horn, and Bassoon

Allegro moderato
Andante, quasi un poco adagio
Allegro con brio
Epilogue

John Harbison | San Antonio, Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano

The Summons
Line Dance
Couples Dance

Program note

I. The traveler has a free afternoon in San Antonio. It is August, 105 degrees. Expecting to start with the cool promenade along the river, he is instead lured by a sound. He follows it up a long stairway and finds himself in a little fiesta: a hot square, many people, no shade, a few people dancing to a fast beat, the band playing and singing in Spanish.

II. The first dancers finish, exhausted. Then, as if on cue, the whole crowd gets into a line of people of all ages, nine to ninety. They all know the steps, which change with the phrases.

III. The music changes again, becoming slower. The people continue on in couples. No one seems to feel the heat and the band hardly stops. Everyone, the traveler included, sinks into it. Towards the end, a young girl asks the traveler to dance. He declines.

But a year later, when the tourist puts down the memory of the sounds, something about a saxophone, and a few rhythms in his distorted memory, he accepts.
– John Harbison

Benjamin Britten | Six Metamorphoses after Ovid, op. 49

Pan, who played upon the reed pipe which was Syrinx, his beloved.
Phaeton, who rode upon the chariot of the sun for one day and was hurled into the river Padus by a thunderbolt.
Niobe, who, lamenting the death of her fourteen children, was turned into stone.
Bacchus, at whose feasts is heard the noise of gaggling women’s tattling tongues and shouting out of boys.
Narcissus, who fell in love with his own image and became a flower.
Arethusa, who, flying from the love of Alpheus the river god, was turned into a fountain
 

Ingolf Dahl | Concerto for Alto Saxophone

Recitative
Adagio
Rondo alla Marcia: Allegro brioso

Program note

Dahl's saxophone concerto was written for Sigurd Rascher in 1949 and revised four years later. It is both a large-scale and an important work, but, because of the difficulty of the solo, as well as the accompaniment, has not been performed often. The scoring of the piece is specifically for "wind orchestra," therefore implying a one-on-a-part performance.
        The concerto is tonally somewhat traditional, but the treatment of rhythm is not, revealing much inspiration from jazz and the works of Igor Stravinsky—with whom Dahl sometimes worked during this period. Dahl proves himself and his style capable of both melancholy and passionate expression in the first two movements, followed by carefree wit (the kind of abandon which Beethoven calls "unbuttoned") in the last. Both kinds of writing are well suited to the unique tone of the saxophone.
        In form, the concerto is unusual, forming a kind of binary unit. The first is made up of the first two movements, both of them slow and connected without a pause; the second is more of a complicated rondo finale. Near the end, in a gesture of deference to classical practice, there is a brief saxophone cadenza, leading to a brilliant prestissimo coda on the rondo theme.                                 
– from Program Notes for Band

Special thanks to:
my parents, Owen, and Ned,
for all of the love and support;

to Ken Radnofsky,
for the last six years of brilliant education and for always believing in me.