**** – Page 11 – musicophilesblog – From Keith Jarrett to Johannes Brahms

My Top 5 Jazz Albums of 2016

Following my Top 5 Classical albums of 2016, here’s my take on Jazz this year.

2016 was tricky with regards to Jazz albums. Actually, usually I build these top 5 lists simply from my 5 star reviews. The thing is, in 2016 I only had one single 5 star Jazz album, GoGoPenguin’s latest release. All others are “only” 4 stars, but still I can wholeheartedly recommend all of them!

Brad Mehldau Trio: Blues And Ballads

Brad Mehldau Trio Blues and Ballads 24 88 Nonesuch 2016

I mentioned it before, I’m not always a fan of Brad Mehldau.

I have The Art Of The Trio vol. 3 in my 25 essential Jazz albums and find it to be a true gem of piano jazz, but run away from many of his more recent releases (YMMV).

This one again is really to my taste, he goes back to his roots, and does it well!

See my initial review here.

GoGoPenguin – ManMade Object

GoGo Penguin Man Made Object 24/44 Blue Note 2016

As mentioned above, the only 5 star album in this list. As you can see in my initial review, this is probably the true successor to Esbjörn Svenssons trio, bringing the Jazz trio into the age of Electronica.

Keith Jarrett – A Multitude of Angels

Keith Jarrett A Multitude Of Angels Modena Ferrara Torino Genova Solo Concerts ECM 2016

A new Keith Jarrett solo album is always an event, even if in this case we’re talking about previously unreleased material from 20 years ago. As you can see in my recent review, I really like it.

Paolo Fresu Richard Galliano Jan Lundgren: Mare Nostrum II

Paolo Fresu Richard Galliano Jan Lundgren Mare Nostrum II (24/88) ACT Music

Check out my review here. Essentially, if you like the accordion, get this. If you don’t like the accordion, at least check it out. It is worth it.

Thierry Maillard – Il Canto Delle Montagne

Thierry Maillard Andre Ceccarelli Dominique di Piazza Il Canto Delle Montagne 24/88 2016 Ilona Records

See my review here, beautiful trio jazz from France.

Your turn now.

As you can see, I was struggling a bit to find truly oustanding Jazz albums this year. I’m sure there’s stuff I must have missed. Please do point me to albums that I may not have seen or heard that you’d recommend in 2016!

You can find the albums here:

Brad Mehldau: here (Qobuz) and here (Nonesuch’s own online store)

Keith Jarrett: here (Qobuz) or here (Amazon)

Paolo Fresu et al:here (Qobuz)

Thierry Maillard: here (Qobuz)

A Multitude Of Angels – A review of the “new” Keith Jarrett solo album recorded by Jarrett himself

Ah, yet another blog post that starts with me complaining that I’m not writing often enough. I guess you don’t care about my excuses, so let me just say I really try to improve the frequency of my writing. So let’s stop whining and get into it.

A New Keith Jarrett Recording?

So, a new Keith Jarrett album! Out of the blue (at least to me)! Very nice surprise obviously for a blog that has Jarrett in the sub-title.

Let’s get the bad news out of the way first: I personally find the title quite cheesy (although Jarrett is very serious about it in the liner notes), and the cover even more so (which is sad given that I do quite like the general ECM sober cover style).

But let’s face it, you won’t buy this album for the title nor the cover, but for the music.

And we’re talking about A LOT of music. Should you decide to buy this on CD (do people still do this?), you’ll get 5 of them, should you decide to download, you may initially be disappointed to get only 12 files, but you’re still getting 4h57 for your money!

A Multitude Of Angels (ECM 2016)

So where is this album all over sudden coming from? Well unfortunately it doesn’t comprise any recent concerts, like the one in Lucerne I attended a year and a half ago (I know they were recording that, so I hope it will eventually be released).

In this case, we’re talking about 20 year old material. These are live recordings from four concerts in Northern Italy, as you see from the cover specifically Modena, Ferrara, Torino, and Genova, all in October 1996.

We were lucky, at the time, Jarrett hat a DAT recorder (one of the earliest portable digital recording techniques) and some microphones with him and was taping his own concerts.

In the liner notes, Jarrett explains that he’s listened to these recordings many times and claims them to be “a pinnacle in his career”. Lucky for us, we finally get to share this pleasure.

How do you describe 5 hours of improvised music?

Well to make it short, I don’t even try. Let me just summarize my impressions: These are indeed beautiful recordings. Are these to my ears the pinnacle of Jarrett’s career? I personally wouldn’t go as far. We’re still in the “old days” of Jarrett’s concerts with long 40 min uninterupted playing, very shortly before he had to take a break for health reasons. While there really is a lot to love here, my only point of criticism would be that sometimes I’d have liked a bit more stylistic variability.

So if you’re a first time Jarrett solo concert buyer, and you won’t get the cheap price on Qobuz (see last paragraph), you may want to go for some other concerts first, like the legendary Köln, or Bremen Lausanne. But if you like Keith Jarrett’s solo concerts, this one is clearly one to go for.

My rating: 4 stars.

You can find it here (Qobuz) or here (Amazon)

A Duo of Jazz Piano and Organ? Seriously? Yes!!!!

The Jazz Organ

I haven’t written a lot about the organ in Jazz yet. This is because I don’t very often listen to it.

I mean, there are some legendary album’s like Jimmy Smith’s The Cat, which I love, but in total I have less than 15 jazz organ albums in my library (which contains 7-8,000 albums).

Michel Petrucciani

However, why haven’t I written about Michel Petrucciani yet? This French genius on the piano?

He was born with a rare genetic disease which lead to very brittle bones and a very short body height. But when you see him on the piano, you can be nothing but amazed:

I guess the reason why I didn’t write about him yet is because some of his later albums went into a certain style I didn’t necessarily like that much.

But there is one album I’ve treasured for two decades now, that combines a Jazz organ and Michel Petrucciani, and guess what, nothing else!

Conférence de Presse (Dreyfus 1994)

This album was recorded at the Petit Journal Montparnasse, a Paris Jazz club I used to go to when I lived in Paris years ago. But unfortunately I wasn’t at this particular concert, which is very much of a pity.

Michel Petrucciani Eddy Louiss Conférence de Presse Dreyfus 1994

But let me introduce the second musician first: Eddy Louis. He’s a French pianist, but better known for his organ. He played with Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie and any other Jazz greats.

I’m pretty sure you don’t have many duo albums of an organ and piano in your collection. So why should you have this one?

Very simply, because it swings like hell.

You already get an idea from the Youtube clip above about what Petrucciani can do with a classic like Caravan. Now add an organ to that, and you get a performance you won’t forget that quickly.

And there’s another true gem on this album when it comes to standards: Summertime. Obviously, nothing beats the legendary performance of Ella & Louis, but this really is an extremely entertaining version.

Check it out!

My rating: 4 stars

Unfortunately, the album is not that easy to find individually.

Qobuz has it as part of a 5 CD box: http://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/album/conference-de-presse-both-world-solo-flamingo-trio-in-tokyo-michel-petrucciani/3460503694026

And you find it on Amazon, often used: https://www.amazon.com/Conférence-Presse-Michel-Petrucciani/dp/B004A3INP2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1477118700&sr=8-1&keywords=petrucciani+conference+de+presse

Il Canto Delle Montagne – Beautiful Trio Jazz by Thierry Maillard

Streaming

I mentioned before that I subscribe to a streaming subscription. This truly is an amazing music discovery tool. It’s like having a huge record shop (remember those) in your own house and on the go 24/7.

I was late to the game and started streaming less than 18 month ago. How stupid of me.

Well obviously, there’s the issue that artists don’t make enough money from streaming. That’s why I, even if I don’t have to, I end up buying albums from the relevant artists I really like anyhow, and everybody should do the same, or even better, go to see them live if you can.

That said, for browsing and discovering new stuff there is simply nothing better.

Thierry Maillard: Il Canto Delle Montagne

The other day I was going through Qobuz “Nouveautés” on my Iphone (I use their app in French, the translations can occasionally be a bit clunky, although they are getting more international these days). I have the genres set to “Classique “and “Jazz”, so new albums in both categories show up here.

More out of boredom I clicked on a relatively ugly cover, a picture of a mountain scene with the Italian title “Il Canto Delle Montagne”. Even my quite poor Italian tells me this means “The Song of the Mountains” in a pretty ugly font (see below). I was expecting something either very rural or very esoteric.

Thierry Maillard Andre Ceccarelli Dominique di Piazza Il Canto Delle Montagne 24/88 2016 Ilona Records

Then I started playing. And noticed I got a really nice piano trio. I clicked on the album cover to enlarge and finally noticed in small white letters that we’re talking about Thierry Maillard’s latest album.

I knew this French pianist from his 2013 album Beyond the Ocean, which I really liked. OK, so moving from the sea to the mountains now.

Now what should you expect from this album? Well, the easiest is to click on the Youtube link below to get an idea, but basically this is very melodic trio jazz, in the way I realyl like it. André Ceccarelli is a French drum legend, who’s played a lot of jazz but also with pop artists like Sting or Tina Turner. He is one of the best drummers France has to offer.

I must admit I didn’t know Dominique Di Piazza, the French bassist, but it turns out he played with John McLaughlin in the past. He doesn’t limit himself to the traditional upright double bass, but goes into electric bass playing quite a bit.

Therefore, very experienced personnel here, and it shows. They pay a lot of attention to each other, and therefore each of the 16 tracks, are worth discovering. We’re not getting a lot of standards, but originals. Some background reading about the album tells me it was essentially composed after the Bataclan terrorist attacks in Paris. However, there’s no terror in here, just beauty.

My rating: 4 stars

You can find it here (Qobuz)

Oops, He Did It Again: Benjamin Grosvenor with Another Great Album!

Benjamin Grosvenor

I’ve mentioned Benjamin Grosvenor several times already, including here, and here in my comments about last year’s Gramophone Awards. If you read through these reviews and comments, you’ll quickly see I’m a huge fan. This young artist (he’s only 24!) is really spectacular.

So far, I have yet to hear a disappointing album from him.

So my hopes were high when he released his new album, Homages.

Homages (Decca 2016)

Benjamin Grosvenor Homages (24/96) Decca 2016

Grosvenor likes albums mixing several composers around a theme. His last album was called Dances, now we’re talking about Homages.

And we start strongly, with Busoni’s piano setting of the famous Chaconne from Bach’s suites for solo violin. This is rather rarely played, which is a pity, as for once a transcription actually adds something (more often than not, they do not work that well for me). You really get the full bandwidth of this beautiful piece, and the outstanding beauty of Milstein’s legendary interpretation comes to mind, while Busoni’s fireworks around the well known melody really works. This sounds almost like Brahms (who by the way also transcribed the Chaconne, but into a version for left hand only), or actually even occasionally like Rachmaninov. A true showpiece, but without any negative connotation that is usually associated with this term.

From this grandiose opening, we move to another rather unfamiliar music, Mendelssohn’s preludes & fuges op. 35. Mendelssohn was essential for the “rediscovery” of Bach in his time, and you can hear the spirit of Bach in these little-known, but beautiful gems.

From these Bach homages, we move on to more traditional romantic piano music with Chopin and Liszt, an area where Grosvenor feels very much at home.

The booklet tries to give some story around why Chopin’s beloved Barcarolle and parts of Liszt’ Années de Pélérinage are homages as well. I must admit I don’t care that much, I just love his playing.

The Barcarolle op. 60 is one of my all time favorites from Chopin. I heard it some years ago by Krystian Zimerman live, in what remains my personal reference. However, this interpretaion really stands on its own, and I like it a lot.Liszt’s Venezia e Napoli is also really well played.

He closes off with Ravel, as already in his Decca debut, focusing Le Tombeau de Couperin, where the homage aspect is already evident from the title.

I wonder if Grosvenor ever will record e.g. an entire cycle or work, or if he’ll stick to this kind of “concept” album. I wouldn’t be surprised if he sticks to the latter, which is great, because it gets me to discover music I wouldn’t necessarily have discovered without him.

Keep going!

My rating: 4 stars (to clarify: this is absolutely 5 stars playing, but not always essential repertoire)

You can find it here (Qobuz) or here (Prestoclassical)

Alice in Grieg’s Wonderland

The usual excuses first

I’ve been crazy busy the last weeks being home on average about 1-2 nights per week, the rest full of business and private travel. Therefore, my blog writing has suffered quite a bit.

And this is not because of a lack of interesting new albums to write about. Well, on Jazz, it partially is, while I do have two reviews upcoming, this site may be a bit disappointing for you currently if you’re more in to Jazz than Classical music. Hope you bear with me.

But with regards to classical, there have been a number of interesting albums released recently, all of which I have planned to write about, including Andreas Staier’s new Schubert Trios, Benjamin Grosvenor’s new release, Adam Laloum getting into Schumann and Schubert, the Chiaroscuro Quartet playing Hadyn, the Belcea Quartet playing Brahms, etc. etc.

OK, so the paragraph above should put enough pressure on me to actually write all these reviews in the next weeks, where hopefully my travel activity should be a bit more measured.

Alice Sara Ott

Alice Sara Ott is a young pianist (born 1988) of German and Japanese origin. She’s recorded already quite a number of albums but the only one I have had on my radar screen so far is her recording of the Complete Waltzes by Chopin. I kind of liked that album, but then again the waltzes are about my least favorite Chopin works relatively speaking, so I didn’t spend much time on it.

Wonderland

Honestly, the title of her latest album put me off a little bit, the wordplay is just a little bit too obvious. But then again, you don’t buy a book for it’s cover, and the same logic should apply for classical albums.

Wonderland Grieg Piano Concerto Lyric Pieces Alice Sara Ott Deutsche Grammophon 2016 24/48

And I’m happy I went further, because this recording of the piano concerto is really worth it.

I’ve previously written about Javier Perianes who did a similar coupling of the piano concerto with the Lyric pieces (see my review here), and this recording, while being quite different, is really at the same level.

If you want to compare the two, Perianes is probably the more energetic, Ott with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the BR symphony takes a more lyrical approach. You’ll get lots of rubato (the concept of “stealing” time to give it back later, i.e. variations of the tempo), with some moments being even extremely slow (already in the opening bars for example).

But unlike the recent recording of the Schumann piano concerto by Melnikov, where I was a bit put off with the slow speed of the third movement, here all slow moments make perfect sense to me. And don’t get me wrong, when the piece needs energy and passion, you’ll get plenty.

Does this version beat my reference version from Leif Ove Andsnes? Well, not exactly, but it is clearly a worthy alternative.

As a “filler”, you don’t get the usual coupling with Schumann, but similar to Perianes, you get a selection of the Lyric pieces, and given that these are little gems, they are very much worth having. To lighten things up a bit more, you even get piano transcriptions of Grieg’s most famous piece, Peer Gynt, in the mix.

My rating: 4 stars

You can find it here (Qobuz) or here (Prostudiomasters)

Do You Have To Be Italian To Conduct Haydn?

Haydn’s Symphonies

I’ve said it before, I’m generally not a big fan of Haydn’s symphonies. I’m sorry, but quite often they just bore me.

However, these days we see a renaissance of Haydn’s symphonies. I’ve previously written about Ottavio Dantone’s beautiful album on Decca, which I liked a lot. In that blog post I’ve already mentioned that another Italian conductor, Giovanni Antonini, is doing an entire cycle of Haydn symphonies, called Haydn2032.

So let’s have a look at their latest release, vol. 3 in the series.

Haydn 2032 Vol. 3 – Solo e Pensoso – Giovanni Antonini, Il Giardino Armonico (Alpha Classics 2016)

Giovanni Antonini Il Giardino Armonico Haydn 2032 No. 3 Solo e pensoso Alpha Classics 2016

In this volume, we get a colorful mix of symphonies, from very early (4) to the Sturm und Drang era of no. 64. I have absolutely no clue how Antonini decided on the order of his complete cycle, but I appreciate the variety. An album only with very early symphonies would probably not be extremely exciting.

Giovanni Antonini and Il Giardino Armonico, very much like Ottavio Dantone and his Accademia, come from baroque music.

And maybe this is really what “Papa Haydn” needs, the lightness and energy of the historically informed baroque playing style. I guess Haydn has suffered from too many years being played by orchestras that were more used to playing Beethoven and Brahms.

But when you get the Giardino Armonico’s joyful playing, an entire new planet opens up.

Not that this is the first historically informed recording of Haydn, but really this cycle promises to be outstanding.

The playing is top notch. The energy is palpable. And the relatively small size of the Giardino Armonico really lets you rediscover Haydn in a new way.

I’ll make sure to follow future releases of this cycle, and so should you. It is really worth it.

My rating: 4 stars (this is not a rating on the playing, which is 5 stars, but I’m waiting for some of the later symphonies to give the full 5 star rating).

You can find it here (Qobuz) and here (Prostudiomasters).

My Top 5 Jazz Albums of 2016

Brad Mehldau Trio: Blues And Ballads

GoGoPenguin – ManMade Object

Keith Jarrett – A Multitude of Angels

Paolo Fresu Richard Galliano Jan Lundgren: Mare Nostrum II

Thierry Maillard – Il Canto Delle Montagne

Your turn now.

You can find the albums here:

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A New Keith Jarrett Recording?

A Multitude Of Angels (ECM 2016)

How do you describe 5 hours of improvised music?

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The Jazz Organ

Michel Petrucciani

Conférence de Presse (Dreyfus 1994)

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Streaming

Thierry Maillard: Il Canto Delle Montagne

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Benjamin Grosvenor

Homages (Decca 2016)

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The usual excuses first

Alice Sara Ott

Wonderland

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Haydn’s Symphonies

Haydn 2032 Vol. 3 – Solo e Pensoso – Giovanni Antonini, Il Giardino Armonico (Alpha Classics 2016)

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