A delightful idea for a concept piano recital! Hamelin – who is known for his courageous excavations of the keyboard repertory in his over 35 recordings for Hyperion – also wrote all the notes for the album, as he does for most of his releases. He begins by explaining there is no real jazz here – these are works which except for a brief section of Gulda’s Prelude & Fugue are all written down, with no improvisation which is so central to real jazz. However, the way these four composers have brought the jazz idiom into their music is endlessly fascinating – they all approach it in different ways.
Gulda, who passed away in 2000, had two simultaneous careers in classical and jazz. He modestly called his little piano pieces Exercises but Hamelin considers them of much higher import than that and plays them as such. The Sonata by Russian composer Kapustin is the major work on the disc, in four movements and running nearly 22 minutes. Insulated from the influence of other similar works he came up with his very own way to fit elements of jazz writing into the standard classical framework. Its perpetual motion finale has been thought to emulate the rapid runs and ornamentation of Art Tatum, but the composer says his influence was the world of country music.
Weissenberg recorded a 45 album in the 50s under the pseudonym of “Mr. Nobody,” of his arrangements of songs made famous by the French singer Charles Trenet. Hamelin thought these so creative that he transcribed them from the 45, since there is no published music. Took him a month. The Antheil Sonata is only 1 1/2 minutes long and throws together some ideas from his longer Jazz Symphony.
– John Sunier
