SINTA QUARTET | ALLMUSIC - REVIEW

Sinta Quartet Plays Beethoven: Op. 95, Op. 131, Op. 132

by: James Manheim | February, 2023

To play Beethoven’s string quartets on saxophones sounds like a gimmick, but the Sinta Quartet (named for University of Michigan professor Donald Sinta, who mentored these four young players) approaches its task with seriousness, and the results do not have the negative whiff of ironic novelty. The album's appearance on the contemporary music-oriented Bright Shiny Things label is also of interest. What holds the listener's attention is the way the players consider and manipulate the intersection between the music and the medium. Beethoven is a composer in whose music the notes often seem to be straining against the instruments rather than lying naturally under them, and this works differently for saxophones than it does for stringed instruments. Consider the opening of the String Quartet No. 11 in F minor, Op. 95 ("Serioso"), where the saxophones are smooth in the opening unison, so startlingly percussive in the original, but then must stretch to hit the following octaves. The biggest reinterpretation comes in the slow movement of the String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132, where the exultant Lydian mode of the final section can't receive the big fortissimo treatment the strings can produce. In its place, the Sinta Quartet players offer a quiet, ecstatic, slow crescendo that is quite affecting. The String Quartet No. 14 in C sharp minor, Op. 131, is yet another story; in some of its short, folky sections, the winds sound quite natural. Well recorded by Bright Shiny Things in a Michigan studio, this is, in no way, for saxophone fans only.