Concert Piece for Two Alto Saxophones
Please tell us something about your father, Sigurd Raschèr.
Carina Rascher: My father had initially studied clarinet in Stuttgart during the 1920s, but then decided to completely dedicate himself to the saxophone as a classical concert instrument. He came to Berlin during the early 1930s. He was involved there in works which included a saxophone in the orchestra – such as Ernst Krenek’s opera Jonny spielt auf, for example. He also played the saxophone part in Hindemith’s opera Cardillac.
Except for such orchestral parts, there was still very little original literature for the classical saxophone during the late 1920s and early 1930s …
… and that’s why my father, young and uninhibited as he was, approached composers and asked them if they would like to write a saxophone work for him. Until then there was hardly any literature for the saxophone, no teachers and no players. My father thus found himself in virgin territory when he decided to commit himself to the classical saxophone. After all, it was the declared aim of Adolphe Sax to invent an instrument for classical music that would serve as a link between woodwinds, brass and strings; indeed, it is a sonically very flexible instrument.
The first piece that was composed at my father’s instigation was the Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra, Op. 6 by Edmund von Borck, a highly promising composer at the time, who was killed in Italy in 1944 at the age of just 37. My father played the Concerto a number of times after its premiere in October 1932, also with the Berlin Philharmonic under Eugen Jochum. It is possible that Hindemith was present at this concert.
How did the contact with Hindemith come about?
Encouraged by the success that my father enjoyed with the von Borck Concerto, he had the courage to approach Paul Hindemith during the early summer of 1933. Hindemith was already then a very successful and well-known composer and, like my father, lived in Berlin. Hindemith immediately agreed to this proposition, announcing that he would write a concert piece for two alto saxophones. Purely out of respect for the famous composer, my father did not ask who the second saxophone player would be, for both parts were equally demanding!
Soon thereafter, your father left Germany as a convinced opponent of the Nazis.
He always said that the clouds over Germany have become too brown for him… He first went to Copenhagen in 1934, where he accepted a professorship in saxophone at the Royal Academy of Music. A few years later he moved to Sweden, where he met his wife. When the Second World War began in September 1939, he was on a concert tour through the USA. He was deported to Cuba and could only return in 1941 and bring over his family from Sweden. He earned a living by teaching at various schools and universities, and he was later able to resume his worldwide career as a saxophone soloist. In 1969 he founded the Raschèr Saxophone Quartet, in which I was also a member and with whom we concertised for many years. He is still very active and successful all over the world today.
What happened with Hindemith‘s Concert Piece?
Initially, my father always kept the autograph manuscript with him; he tried a few times to perform it with a pupil, but was never entirely satisfied with their achievements … So it lay in the desk drawer for a long time. He finally taught it to me, and we played the world premiere in 1960 at the Eastman School of Music where he taught in those days – I was just 14 years old! After that we played it a lot in concerts, and today it is firmly established as a standard work in the repertoire of all classical saxophonists.
Did Sigurd Raschèr and Hindemith ever meet again?
We were invited for a concert with Paul Sacher in Zurich in March 1964, and the Concert Piece was on the programme. Shortly before his death in late 1963, Hindemith had announced that he would come to the concert; he expressed his joy to the press that he could hear this work that had meanwhile almost been forgotten! Unfortunately it never came to this.
Where is the estate of Sigurd Raschèr today?
The estate is preserved in an archive at the State University of New York in Fredonia. It contains the extensive correspondence of my father, about 9000 letters, as well as instruments, audio recordings and manuscripts of the works that my father commissioned from all over the world – a total of over 200 works altogether, including many of the most frequently performed works for classical saxophone today. In this public library one can also conduct research on Sigurd Raschèr; alongside his teaching material and other historical documents, there is the extensive collection of secondary literature written about him over the past seven decades.
SSG