SAXOPHOBIA
SAXOPHOBIA

Saxophobia

  • 01.02.2025 - 04.02.2025
  • Bratislava events today, What to do in Bratislava
  • 10 - 15 €

The Saxophobia Music Festival will take place this year from 1 February to 2 February 2025, with an extra concert at the Albrecht House on 4 February 2025. The event will introduce audiences to saxophone music and offer a variety of saxophone-focused performances, workshops, and concerts that showcase the saxophone’s versatility and range in a variety of musical genres.

1. Saxophone Masters Gala Concert

A concert dedicated to the saxophone as an instrument of classical music, featuring seven top international lecturers of the Saxophobia Bratislava 2025 masterclasses.

All the performers are top, world-renowned artists who also work as teachers at conservatories and universities.

Performers:

Ryo NODA (Japan)
Philippe PORTEJOIE (France)
Pieter PELLENS (Belgium)
Álvaro Collao LEÓN (Chile/Austria)
Lev PUPIS (Slovenia)
Erzsébet SELELJO (Hungary)
Pavel ŠKRNA (Czech Republic)
Ladislav FANČOVIČ (Slovakia) – piano cooperation

Programme:

The concert will feature compositions for our audience by lesser-known as well as well-known composers for solo saxophone with piano accompaniment, as well as original compositions for saxophones, several of which have been dedicated to the performers, including several Slovak premieres.

Venue: Primatial Palace, Mirror Hall, Bratislava
Date: Saturday, 1 February, 2025
Start: at 19:00
Concert duration: 60 minutes without intermission

2. Concert of the 100 participants saxophone orchestra

Did you know that the saxophone was patented in 1846 by Adolphe Sax, the inventor of several musical instruments?

The reason for this “invention” of the young Belgian was that he wanted to (simplistically speaking) construct an instrument that would have the flexibility of the human voice and, with its sound colour, form a kind of imaginary bridge between wind and string instruments in symphony orchestras or in military and marching bands. No one knew about jazz at that time, it was not born on the banks of the Mississippi River until a good 60 years later.

Contemporary composers were captivated by the sound of the new instrument from the start. In 1842, Hector Berlioz wrote an article in the Journal des Débats: “I know of no instrument in use at the present time that can be compared with it. Its sound is full, delicate, radiant, has tremendous power and can be softened”, and in 1844 he was the first in the world to use it in the instrumentation of the Chant sacré.

The saxophone also charmed other greats of Impressionism and the emerging wave of symphonic jazz, who included it in their orchestras – Ravel (Bolero), Mussorgsky (Pictures at an Exhibition), Gershwin (Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris, etc.), Debussy, Rachmaninoff, Bizet, Berg, Shostakovich, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Ibert, Britten, Penderecki, Milhaud, and many others.

And it is Maurice Ravel’s BOLERO that you will be able to hear performed by the above 100-piece saxophone orchestra at the closing concert of Saxophobia – Concert of the 100-piece saxophone orchestra on 2 February at the Slovak Radio.

Venue: Large concert studio of the Slovak Radio, Bratislava
Date: Sunday, February 2, 2025
Start: at 19:00
Duration of the concert: 70 minutes without intermission

3. Concert dedicated to classical music and saxophone

at the Albrecht House:

Two legends of classical saxophone – Ryo Noda (Japan) and Philippe Portejoie (France) accompanied by Ladislav Fančovič will play a concert in the Albrecht House. This concert presents the saxophone as a full-fledged instrument of classical music, as it is mainly perceived as a jazz instrument in Slovakia. However, its inventor Aldolphe Sax made it ca. in 1843, he constructed the sax for the purposes of classical music and bands playing marching music (jazz was not born until 50 years later). The Belgian Sax wanted to create an instrument that would form a kind of imaginary bridge between wind and string instruments.

Composers were captivated by its sound in the early years, and the artists will perform works for solo saxophone accompanied by piano, saxophone duo and trio, as well as arrangements of compositions from the Baroque period, through Impressionism, Romanticism and contemporary compositions using the enormous variety of colours and percussive sounds that can be conjured up on the saxophone.

Programme: J. S. Bach, R. Schumann, M. de Falla, R. Noda

Performers:

Ryo NODA (Japan)
Philippe PORTEJOIE (France)
Ladislav FANČOVIČ (Slovakia) – piano cooperation

Venue: Albrecht House, Kapitulská Street, Bratislava, Slovakia
Date: Tuesday, February 4, 2025
Start: at 19:00

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