The five items on this disc, are excellent vehicles for Harle's virtuoso eloquence. Lenehan is also a wonderful musician and their partnership is magically sympathetic.
Richard Rodney Bennett's Sonata, Dave Heath's Rumania, each for the soprano instrument, and Michael Berkeley's Keening, for the alto, were written for them. The first being four wistfully well-crafted movements whose third pays homage to Harold Arlen. The Heath, like the (alto) sonata by Phil Woods, is overt, enjoyable jazz. Edison Denisov's Sonata (alto sax) is a braising post-modernist riff.
THE SUNDAY TIMES 2005 (Paul Driver)
John Harle's range of styles, expression, and sheer volume is quite remarkable, and he is matched all the way by John Lenehan.
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE (Anthony Burton)
One for saxophone aficionados, with brilliant performances from both players.
From Bizet's L'arlésienne on, French composers adopted the timbre of the saxophone naturally as yet another orchestral colour. British composers have been slower on the uptake, but as this collection shows it can be done very convincingly. Richard Rodney Bennett's Sonata for soprano saxophone is an impressive example. The first movement is plaintive in mood, not without its skittish moments, but with a touching close. The third movement Andante is based on the Harold Arlen song "Once I had a sweetheart" before a bravura rondo finale.
Michael Berkeley's Keening for the darker, throatier alto sax, draws its title from the Irish funeral lament. Its grief is boldly even vehemently expressed, its style virtuosic, yet leading to a lament which brings in upward glissandi in the desparate melancholy of its closing section.
The opening mood of the Denisov Sonata is dry and jocular, tongue firmly in cheek; even the Lento (though expressively dark in colour), with its sudden sforzandi becomes ambivalent in mood. The finale moves to the world of jazz and the brilliance of bebop. An entertaining, contradictory piece, mavellously brought off here. Dave Heath's Rumania and the Sonata by Phil Woods are more obviously crossover works in spired by jazz; John Harle at times creates an instrumental colour rather like a cor anglais.
Both he and John Lenehan relish the virtuosity and lyrical characters of all these pieces with some brilliant playing. They are truthfully recorded; but this is a disc for saxophone aficionados: they have not uncovered a real masterpiece here.
GRAMOPHONE 2004 (Ivan March)
This is the most beautiful alto-playing since Johnny Hodges: and the most beautiful soprano-playing ever. Or so it seems after listening to the two records. Yet perhaps a qualification or two might be in order: I do not think Hodges would have made such a showing in a good deal of the music here recorded; the altogether unusual control of the soprano shown seems to bring its sound closer to that of the alto rather than the reverse and a belated reference, here, to the sparkling piano-playing of John Lenehan should not be taken to mean that his contribution to the whole is not a major one (it is just not quite so unusual!).
The merging of these two talents brings two programmes of great interest. The Hyperion record offers original music for the duo concerned: three sonatas and two one-movement pieces. Of the sonatas, that of Richard Rodney Bennett seems the most effectively constructed, offering a sense of purpose throughout its four movements (and a reference to a Harold Arlen song unknown to me: Once I had a sweetheart). The Phil Woods Sonata makes regular references to various, perhaps too many, jazz styles: so does that of Edison Denisov, which, though disfigured by explorations of the outer fringes of sax technique which many will join me in thinking best left unexplored, has a great vitality in its layout and, often, its forward urge.
Single movements are of course easier to construct than multi-movement sonatas: and neither Dave Heath nor Michael Berkeley has much difficulty in that direction. The Rumania of Heath's title refers to the Bartok Rumanian Dances, part of his source-material this is improbably varied (not only Bartok, but also Courtney Pine, Ysaye and Richard Clayderman are called on); but the result is by no means ineffective. Nor is that of Michael Berkeley's Keening, a reference to the caoine of Irish mourning. (The caoine came into gramophone history once before: older readers will remember the movement of that name from Stanford's Clarinet Sonata which filled the odd 78rpm side of Thurston's original recording of the Bliss Clarinet Quintet).
The Hannibal/Harmonia Mundi record is also nothing if not varied, but this is of course in the nature of a well-chosen collection of short pieces. Here no holds are barred: there is Bach (a straightforward performance of the 'doubtful' G minor violin and keyboard sonata), and there is John Coltrane (parent influence on Jeremy Wall's Elegy for Trane) Also from antiquity (in the context!) is the classical writing of Leonardo Vinci (the missing 'da' is of the essence: they were different people!). Deep purple (a slightly unfamiliar shape to the tune) is another for the older reader: who, listening at the time, could forget Rudy Wiedoft, king of the C melody sax? Syrinx, originally for unaccompanied flute, comes up marvellously (in Harle's hands!) for unaccompanied alto. The cinema is represented by two excerpts from Bennett's Tender is the night and justice is done to John Lenehan by allotting him two piano solos: the Gershwin Preludes, and Poulenc's Hommage a Edith Piaf, a touching homage in its gentle simplicity.
Gentle simplicity (though Dave Heath also touches on it in his final Out of the cool) is perhaps in rather short supply on the Hannibal disc as a whole. And, conversely, there seems on the Hyperion a great deal of referring back to other earlier music. But there is a massive degree of skill in performance and recording shown here. These are two marvellous records.
GRAMOPHONE (The original review from 1988)