German saxophone ensemble
The German Saxophone Ensemble (DSE) is a professional saxophone quartet in the classic line-up with soprano, alto, tenor and baritone saxophone.
history
The formation "Saxophone Quartet" did not exist in the German cultural scene from 1945 until the mid-1970s . Guest tours by the Raschèr Saxophone Quartet , founded in America in 1969, brought this line-up to Germany for the first time in the 1970s . As a result, Jürgen Demmler, Reinhold Cieslik, Peter Matejcek and Heinrich Hölzli founded Germany 's first professional and regularly working saxophone quartet at the Mannheim University of Music in 1979 ; with reference to the region, it operated as the Palatinate Saxophone Ensemble .
At the 7th World Saxophone Congress in Nuremberg in 1982 , the quartet , now with Michael Ruf (tenor saxophone) as the successor to Peter Matejcek, performed at several concerts. At the time the only German quartet of its kind that performed regularly, it decided to use the name Deutsches Saxophon Ensemble from then on.
This was followed by radio - and television productions with German premiere recordings of French original works. Arrangements from the field of popular classical music were commissioned in order to bring the often still unknown cast closer to the audience. Dieter Reith , Rolf-Hans Müller and Rolf Schneebiegl arranged for the ensemble, among others .
The first German composers , mostly from the background of the Mannheim University of Music , wrote new original works for the DSE, such as Wolfgang Hofmann , Helmut Vogel and Hans-Rudolf Johner.
In 1985 Karl Schlechta took over the position on the alto saxophone from Reinhold Cieslik.
In 1990 Jürgen Demmler (soprano saxophone) received the first professorship for classical saxophone at a German music academy at the Freiburg University of Music.
At the turn of the millennium, Nicole Schillings and Monika Leufgen took over the positions of soprano and alto saxophone respectively. Associated with this was a programmatic realignment of the ensemble.
Apart from jazz and light music , the German Saxophone Ensemble dedicates itself to the original standard literature for saxophone quartet in the field of serious music . Committed to its name, the quartet is also particularly committed to contemporary works by German composers, and with their own transcriptions they make important traditional masterpieces of German music history accessible to the saxophone .
In 2001 Kirsten Trunski succeeded Heinrich Hölzli as baritone saxophonist. Since she moved to France in 2003, Thomas Tomaschek became her interim successor before the current formation was formed in 2005 with Katharina Stashik on the baritone saxophone .
The German Saxophone Ensemble chose Koblenz as the central rehearsal domicile .
In March 2010 the first CD production of the current line-up was released. In addition to other contrapuntal works by Paul Hindemith , Johann Sebastian Bach , Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy , Robert Schumann , Johannes Brahms and Richard Strauss , the Great Fugue op.133 by Ludwig van Beethoven in its own arrangement for saxophone quartet was recorded worldwide for the first time .
Recently, the great old masters of the 20th century, Harald Genzmer and Jürg Baur, have also composed for the ensemble.