Of course we all know that the genre Symphony is reserved primarily for the orchestra. The many different timbres of a symphony can produce no other body than an orchestra, especially since the works are so finely orchestrated that the distribution to only four instruments of a family seems impossible.
This symphony by
W.A.MOZARTsounds in a completely new guise in the saxophone quartet version. Due to the different timbres of soprano, alto, tenor and baritone saxophone, an instrumentation that does justice to the work is quite possible. There was no need to delete any passages or voices to reflect the full sonority of the symphony - the saxophone family seems to be transformed into an orchestral machine with its own sound quality. This processing is kept in the original key G-minor. It is very surprising that the ambitus of the orchestra can be well adapted to the ambitus of the saxophone quartet. However, the individual voices often move in the border registers of the respective instrument. Every voice has its big "performances".
To do justice to this masterpiece as a player on the sax requires certain playing skills. All articulations are entered in the musical text. The accompanying figures (bar 1 ff Ts & As) do not require staccato, but rather a détaché, which should be as stringy as possible. This raises the technically biggest problem in the whole work, because tenor and alto saxophone must be able to perform the quartet accompaniment in absolutely parallel and still quietly "trembling". But if one dares this "maneuver", then a flight at the speed of light is guaranteed by Mozart's wonderful symphony and the saxophone quartet takes on the cloak of an unheard-of orchestra.
