Lauba, Christian - Balafon
It is an interesting and strange experience to consider work by composers who are primarily themselves instrumental performers. Moreso when they are writing for instruments without the gigantic heritage of classical canon upholding them. In saxophone we have a number of these individuals: Ryo Noda, Barry Cockroft and of course Christian Lauba. His extremely quiet Study, Balafon, part of a nine-part collection provides a cloudy modernist echo, one of the Malian xylophone. This beautiful instrument has a slightly different tuning system which we hear aped most closely in the multiphonics in the later sections of this piece. The most striking feature of this Study, which it shares with the slightly more visceral 'Jungle' is the protracted low dynamic. It's not abundantly clear to me what purpose this serves, although it does make the piece ludicrously difficult to present comfortably. It might well be a doddle for the clarinet and I'm not sure the tension and effort it creates for the saxophonist quite correlates to the African instrument, but I think this piece is a piece we can be quite grateful for. It does need to be performed in the right setting - I once performed it as a solo item in a sort of world music gig to confused looks and polite applause at the end.