Nightfall and Midnight Revels – New Chamber Music from Two Centuries
Paul Cohen; Various artists
Ravello Records rr8117 (ravellorecords.com/catalog/rr8117)
Sadly, in the world of chamber music, the saxophone is usually not in the picture at all; even in 2025 the standard strings and wind instruments usually take precedence. Famous exceptions would be William Walton’s brilliant Façade or various transpositions of Bach, Hindemith and other works.
Paul Cohen’s Nightfalls and Midnight Revels does an excellent job of rectifying this by highlighting many obscure works and presenting “a distinguished array of music old and new, including chamber works for trio, quartet and quintet.” Cohen plays soprano and alto saxophones in addition to the “conn-o-sax,” a straight design in “F” (saxes are normally tuned in B-flat or E-flat) which was produced for only one year (1928). Other instrumentation includes piano, violin, viola, cello and other saxophones, and includes pieces from 1932 to 2021.
There are several beautiful gems in this collection – for example Wolfgang Jacobi’s recently discovered Kleine Stucke (1932) and John Sichel’s Piano Saxophone Quintet (2021) – and I heartily urge everyone to give it a listen: you will be surprised and intrigued.
