Debussy was quite the saxophone skeptic. In a 1903 letter to a friend while working on the only piece he’d ever write for it, he called it  a “reedy animal” and a “colourless instrument” that gave him no joy to compose for.

It’s a funny fact to chew on when the Nexas Quartet plays his work live on stage (which it does so frequently): his harmonic language shines in the group’s own arrangements of his work, his melodies absolutely sing with the lilting soprano sax of Michael Duke. If only he could hear it like this.

Nexas Quartet. Photo © Keith Saunders

In Transcendent Reverie, Suite bergamasque, Nuit d’etoiles and Beau Soir found a place in the first half of the program, to help us “forget those unbought Christmas presents and holiday traffic”, jokes bari sax player Jay Byrnes.

The sax arrangement of Suite bergamasuqe – in the Prelude, deep enveloping low chords feel really right, and are performed with a measured ebb-and-flow from the quartet. ln the evergreen Claire de lune, Nexas kept it light and sweet – while it means the work loses a little of the bite that its flowing arpeggios have on piano, it saves up the...