Xelo Giner is one of the great exponents of contemporary saxophone music, and her programme binds together each piece in a logical progression that also reflects the turbulence and vicissitudes of the European avant-garde. Kurtág’s miniatures, in arrangements by the composer, summon up the essence of his aesthetic ideology, while Stockhausen explores elements of antagonistic forces in In Freundschaft. Steen-Andersen’s De Profundis demands extreme virtuosity, and Hèctor Parra’s sonic alchemy in Chymisch shows how composers are extending the instrument’s technical compass.

Xelo Giner is an internationally renowned saxophonist and is the dedicatee of over 70 works, who has given the national premieres of pieces by composers such as Iannis Xenakis, Phill Niblock, Alvin Curran and Mauricio Sotelo, among others. She performs internationally and has appeared under the baton of Zubin Mehta, Lorin Maazel and Roberto Abbado.

In 2016 she was invited by György Kurtág to perform In Nomine – all’Ongherese for solo saxophone at the Palace of Arts Budapest as part of his 90th birthday celebration. The composer noted: ‘The music is clearly manifested in her personality and charged with overwhelming energy… Fantastic and incredible, when you play you make every musical phrase, you are inside the music, every gesture and every movement is of pure and natural expression.’