Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bartok, blues, and the umbrellas of Cherbourg?, 23 Nov 2007
"Not everything quite fits", says Laurent Korcia in his booklet note. This is true in one way, in as much as Bela Bartok and Django Reinhardt are 2 names you wouldn't necessarily expect to see together (or at least not very far apart). But Korcia writes of relishing this fact, and I'm with him there. Actually on paper the list of composers isn't so strange - after all, Bartok did have his Contrasts, and the Debussy and Ravel pieces always come up when "jazz classical" is mentioned. So the question really becomes, does the disc hold together as a single entity? To which the answer is, very much so.
We start with the Reinhardt-Grappelli composition "Minor swing", and while I did recognise the tune I admit my knowledge of this area of music is woeful; suffice to say I was impressed. It's followed by a charming piece by Michel Portal, which brought to my mind The Godfather reimagined as a comedy. Then we come to the "real classical", first with the blues movement from Ravel's violin sonata. Korcia mischievously introduces some twangs at the start, and although he doesn't seem to mess around too much afterward, this is a much jazzier performance than the piece usually gets - makes others sound like a piece of French classical music, I suppose! Michael Wendeberg's contribution is wonderful, by the way. The Ravel segues very neatly into the Debussy sonata. For some reason I'd never heard this before in its entirety, and I was bowled over. I can't say whether Korcia is better, worse, or different than anyone else. I'm just embarrassed that this music had passed me by. I was also very impressed with the Wieniawski piece, for 2 violins, which begins with a baroque feel to it but becomes increasingly impassioned. And so the mix continues, and all holding together remarkably well, although I felt the gear change from Gideon Klein to more Reinhardt-Grappelli didn't quite work. The Michel Legrand piece epitomises the ethos of the album - the sense of enjoyment and the musical rapport between the collaborators are probably what will linger longest in the memory after the music is finished. The disc closes with 2 songs that were recorded by Caruso, but this time the singer is Jean-Louis Aubert. I hadn't heard of him, and to say he doesn't sing like Caruso is to state the blindingly obvious, but the songs really work. It supports the nagging suspicion I have that almost anything will sound good (or at least better than it has a right to be) if sung in French by a pop singer.
Overall, then, a fascinating and always entertaining hour of musicianship. It was a pleasure to be allowed to listen in.
|
|
|
|
With an Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificate, you can get them what they want (even if you don't know what that is). 
Amazon Home
