NDR/Arte

Asya Fateyeva and the Saxophone

“What lot there is to do with the saxophone!” – that amazes Asya Fateyeva anew every day. With her enthusiasm, the classically trained saxophonist opens the door to the most diverse musical styles and epochs. From solo instrument to chamber music, from classical repertoire to modern, from renaissance to baroque music: with Asya Fateyeva, this instrument has found an impressive young artist who, with her mission to constantly expand the saxophone’s repertoire, is achieving a broader acceptance of the instrument in the music world and celebrating its versatility in the process.

In the concert portrait “Asya Fateyeva and the Saxophone”, the musical centerpiece is a composition by Johannes Brahms. His F minor Sonata op.120 is primarily a standard work for clarinet or viola and piano. There is an orchestration by Luciano Berio. None of this has anything to do with the saxophone so far, but this does not stop Asya Fateyeva from interpreting the orchestrated sonata with the saxophone. Together with the “ensemble reflektor” and conductor Katharina Wincor, she impressively demonstrates in front of a sold-out Elbphilharmonie that this work is perfectly suited to the saxophone with its timbre between oboe, flute and clarinet.

In our documentary we accompany Asya Fateyeva to Dinant in Belgium, where the inventor of the instrument Adolphe Sax was born and where she was the first female prize-winner at the important competition “Concours International de Adolphe Sax”. In Lyon, she meets her former professor and composer Jean-Denis Michat with whom she created the project “Canticas”.