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Gusnar Paweł, koncepcja serii, wybór utworów, redakcja merytoryczna

Studia orkiestrowe na saksofon / Study of Orchestra Parts for Saxophone


  1. 1: American Music
  2. 2: European Music
Concept of the series, selection of works, content edition: Paweł Gusnar

Source compilation of texts, commentary: Emilia Dudkiewicz

Chopin University Press, FCUM, Warsaw 2018, pp. 76 (v. 1) + 111 (v. 2)

ISBN: 978-83-65990-02-0 (v. 1), 978-83-65990-03-7 (v. 2)
Study of Orchestra Parts for Saxophone edited by Paweł Gusnar is the second publication in Poland (forty years after Lesław Lic’s work was published in 1978 by PWM) and one of few publications worldwide touching on this topic. Its aim is to expand the knowledge about the use of different types of saxophone in an orchestra and to enable the acquisition of practical skills in this respect.

The work is of an original and pioneering nature as it is the first one to include such a great number of music pieces of the 20th and 21st centuries, e.g. rarely performed compositions and examples taken from the Polish literature. The criterion for score material selection was the repertoire diversity, also the presentation of works previously unpublished in orchestra studies or published in an incomplete version and the presence of compositions with saxophone parts suitable for a group performance, emphasising different kinds of technical and interpretative issues.

New are the compositions by Krzysztof Penderecki and Piotr Moss; there are also works by Aleksander Tansman, Mieczysław Wajnberg, Sergei Prokofiev, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein and William Walton. A point of interest is the use of soprano saxophone in Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition orchestrated by Sergei Gorchakov. Worth noticing are also the compositions with two or more saxophones used parallelly (works by D. Shostakovich, G. Gershwin, L. Bernstein and M. Ravel).

What makes this publication unique is the extensive source information on each composition, which was collected, compiled and commented on by Emilia Dudkiewicz and which touches on such aspects as performance line-up, duration, time and place the works were written, dedications, premiere performances, selected discography and subject literature.

Study of Orchestra Parts for Saxophone edited by Paweł Gusnar has been published in a bilingual version (in Polish and English).

Selected reviews:

This brillant book by Pawel Gusnar should be in each saxophone students library. This presentation of saxophone solos’s orchestra definitely helps and inform us. Do the saxophone belong to  the crowd of the orchestra? Read it and you’ll have an answer.

Vincent David, Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Versailles

have discovered the two volumes of “Orchestral Studies for Saxophone” by my friend Pawel Gusnar. These works will enable all saxophonists to expand their knowledge of the usage of saxophones in orchestra. My hearty congratulations for Pawel Gusnar on this meticulous research work.

Jean Yves Fourmeau, Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Cergy-Pontoise