Nine years after beginning their journey as a curious chamber group that emerged from Esmuc, the young members of the Kebyart Quartet are maturing and finding their stability. It is not that the Catalan saxophone quartet is entering into a routine but that the dreams they projected are coming true. And it was not easy for the demanding world of classical music to appreciate his proposal: transcribe some classics from the repertoire for saxophones and give rise to the new creation for such a peculiar sound. They could have remained something anecdotal, but the rooms want them to repeat. This weekend they debut with the OBC at L’Auditori.
They also do it with one of the jewels of their repertoire for four saxophones and orchestra, the Concerto that Philip Glass composed in 1995 (the year in which three of the members of Kebyart were born), which they performed last year at the Palau de la Música. Catalan together with the GIO Symphonia. “By playing this piece we are not facing the minimalism of 40 identical measures, what’s up! Here we go through many states and the work has a couple of slower movements. Whoever comes to listen to a saxophone quartet will find all the possible colors,” says Pere Méndez.
Robert Seara, Víctor Serra, Daniel Miguel and he now have a good relationship with the record company Outhere Music, with which they have just released their second album, Traum der Jugend (dream of youth), dedicated to especially Germanic composers, including Jörg Widmann, of whom they record the commission they made for the ECHO Rising Stars tour.
“It is a dream come true that a composer of Widmann’s stature decided to write for us,” adds Robert Seara. “And it was from there that we drew lines of connection with Felix Mendelssohn, of whom Widmann is a fan. He has arranged many of his music that was already close to us from the beginning. Not only Felix but Fanny Mendelssohn. And the natural connection with Bach, since it was Felix who discovered him in the 19th century.”
Among his next plans is a project with Xavier Sabata in Grunwald. A song book with the Catalan countertenor that ranges from Vivaldi and Händel to Michael Nyman or Kurt Weill. Because they have also now moved to Berlin, leaving behind their academic period in Basel. Switzerland already required a residence permit and they are incorporated as an S.L. in Spain… Germany, on the other hand, has given them many concerts…
“We feel that we are being accepted very well throughout Europe, we have been to twenty of the most important venues, we have debuted in the main festivals, we have a German agency. And Berlin also means attending concerts, getting new ideas and trying to project ourselves into the future.” For now they have a tour planned with the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie. “It is shocking, we will have played before with the German National Youth Orchestra before with the Jonde or the Jonc, which are institutions that we are very fond of,” they point out.
But it is precisely in a country like Germany, where, they say, “they have very well assumed the tradition and all the quartet integrals, which is why they are looking for new ideas for the chamber music seasons, and not only: also the orchestras.” . Furthermore, the audience at concerts in Germany is very critical and “always has a comment to ask you, a question, a suggestion, and that is very good because in the end they make you feel that what you are doing affects someone, while in Spain “Music is a bit like an ornament and not so much as a first necessity,” they point out.
For this weekend’s concert at L’Auditori, directed by Jaume Santonja, they will use an encore of their eclectic repertoire. Which ranges from George Gershwin’s Summertime to that “very crazy” version of Leonard Cohen’s Take This Waltz that appears on the Barcelona quartet’s first album.
