Customer Reviews

Brandenburg Gate: Revisited (Reis)

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This is usually one of the first albums I reach for when I am looking for a smooth-over: the very first phrases of the first track are like a great big sigh, and it draws you into a fully engaging CD of classical and jazz. I notice this isn't one of Amazon's essential Brubeck recordings - his body of work must be stellar!

I bought this record on vinyl when it first came out. I found it again recently in my parents' attic. I took it home, and put it on my aging turntable again--and remembered why I didn't take it with me the first time when I left the house year's ago.

Seems many, it not all jazz musicians (up through at least the '60's) felt the need to "legitimize" their work by playing in front of a full concert orchestra--or in the case of the immortal Duke, even composing for one.

I like classical music. I like jazz. I also like orange juice and milk. But with music, as with beverages, I don't like the mixture.

This album does not swing. It may lull you to sleep.

I love every tune on this album--but not the versions on the album. The later versions are lush and phony--sounding like bad hollywood sound tracks, at best.

The most telling example of degeneracy is the title piece, 'Brandenburg Gate,' first recorded on 'Jazz Impressions of Eurasia.' (A stupendous album, by the way.) Originally concieived as a Bach-like composition, both contrapuntal and polyphonic in form and execution, it is a masterpiece of integrating 18th century elements and reconceiving them in swing. And just like a great Bach keyboard work, it is spare and crisp--nothing wasted, yet nothing missing.

Now, however, the same piece orchestrated in the style of Holly Ridge Strings loses every smidgeon of grace. The real "classic" elements of the original composition--the 18th century form, feeling, and intellectual tone--are subverted by a string arrangement that owes nothing to Bach and much to muzak.

Don't buy this CD unless you are, like me, a fan, and would listen to anything DBQ ever did--even if it were awful.

After 35 years of having been stationed in Germany with the U.S. Army where I first heard this Album, it is finally available on CD! The music perfectly captures the mood, feeling, and hope, and tragedy of the German people and the Berlin Wall. The songs weave back and forth from classical to jazz, and it is Brubeck's most beautiful music........just shut your eyes and take yourself back to Berlin and the Wall. Even it you don't like jazz, you will be caught up in this recording. A MASTERPIECE AND ALBUM FOR THE AGES !

Classical and jazz can be mixed--he just didn't do it right here. All you get in the title track is the same theme and changes, repeated over and over for nearly 20 minutes. The thing just "changes clothes" in terms of arrangement each run-through. Even at that, I'm not sure that orchestral arrangements necessarily add up to classical/ jazz fusion--look at Henry Mancini, for example. Maybe Brubeck hadn't developed his version of it by this album's creation in 1959--he was to do much better five years later in 1964's "Time Changes", with the 18-minute "Elementals" (is that thing out of print? I can't find it here). And in my opinion, Chuck Mangione really perfected the concept in 1971 with his live "Friends & Love" album, joined by the Rochester NY Philharmonic Orchestra. Rayburn Wright of that very same orchestra had helped Brubeck arrange "Elementals" in '64. Coincidence? Perhaps not. Maybe this album simply lacks balance--the orchestral format continues into the short pieces further along in this album, while "Time Changes" starts out in quartet format--then it gives you "Elementals" as a grand finale. But this album at times verges on Muzak in the same way Miles Davis' Gil Evans series tends to do. I guess it takes some doing to drag in a symphony orchestra without making your music soporific. Brubeck didn't quite succeed in dodging that pitfall in this, his freshman effort in symphonia.

This is one my favourite Brubeck albums ;all the tunes are excellent ; the quartet is in top form .
Brubeck blends jazz and classical music amazingly.People want him to swing but they're talking to the wrong man ; Brubeck is from a classical background ( learning from people like DARIUS MILHAUD )
so it's natural that he has a tendency towards classical music and no one
mixed classical music and jazz quiet as brubeck did.
Turn the lights off and listen to this jazz symphony.

I've asked for this CD since the CD industry have started. Finnally I found it here! Thanks God!!

You will not regret purchasing this album. It is wonderfully uplifting. It's a Sunday morning kinda music over coffee and the papers.