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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A good version of Stravinsky's Ebony Concerto - the rest depends on your interest for Woody Herman's Jazz,
By
This review is from: Ebony Richard Stoltzman & Woody Herman's Thundering Herd (Audio CD)
The disc is Richard Stoltzman's homage to Woody Herman, featuring (if I understand the liner notes, which are not entirely precise on this) compositions that were written and/or played by Herman's Band (designated throughout its history by various derivations of the name "Woody Herman Herd"), including an arrangement of four songs from Bernstein's West Side Story (track 8, Songs from the West Side). Stoltzmann leads and is partnered by Herman's Thundering Herd - in presumably its lineup at the time of the recording. Herman was still alive when the recording was made, in May 1987. He passed away five months later.
To me, the disc's main interest is Stravinsky's Ebony Concerto - a small gem, Stravinsky's take on big-band Jazz, written for Herman in 1946. Not really a Concerto, in fact: the moments for solo clarinet are very few and short, and it is always imbedded in the orchestral fabric. More a Concerto Grosso, really, or a Sinfonietta as the liner notes call it (it's been also likened to Bach's Brandenburg Concertos... anything goes). It wasn't really understood at the time. A critic (as recounted in the liner notes) called it "neither good Stravinsky nor good Jazz". Even Herman apparently didn't get it; he is quoted by the liner notes saying that the Concerto "had nothing to do with Jazz" and that "Stravinsky just wanted to write something for our bastard kind of instrumentation". Maybe the Concerto wasn't very well played at the premiere. In needs the kind of swing that Stravinsky has marvellously captured in his 1965 recording with the Columbia Jazz Ensemble and Benny Goodman as a starry soloist (Collector's Edition). In fact, it is great Stravinsky and it is great Jazz. It has the swing (at least in Stravinsky's recording), the syncopation and the instrumental pungency of the Big Bands, but it is also pure Stravinsky, a metabolization of Jazz into the language of Stravinsky, rather than just a quote of Jazz as many classical composers do when they tackle Jazz. The liner notes are very interesting for their anecdotes on the work's inception (with invaluable recollections from the original performers) and for Stoltzman's comments on the piece, but I find them highly disputable in their contention that Jazz in the early decades of the 20th Century was taboo for the classical composers, save a few mavericks (Stravinsky in his Ragtime being one of them). It may have been taboo in the most reactionary circles, but it was embraced with enthusiasm by many composers of note other than Stravinsky: Satie, Gershwin, Ravel, Copland, Krenek, Hindemith and all the way to Bernstein. Anyway. Obviously Stoltzman has listened carefully to Stravinsky's 1965 recording. His reading is much closer to that than to Herman's own 1958 recording for Everest (Igor Stravinsky: Ebony Concerto; L'Histoire du Soldat; Darius Milhaud: La Création du Monde; I have it on its earlier CD reissue by Philips, Stravinsky: Ebony Concerto, Symphony in 3 Movements, Petrouchka (Philips)). Stoltzman isn't as biting and urgent as Stravinsky in the two outer movement (and not as vividly recorded, and the piano sounds more distant than the rest of the instruments), but displays fine instrumental character and piquant articulation, The slow movement is very similar to Stravinsky's. No doubt to underline the Jazzband aspect, RCA has kept the voice of Stolzman counting "one, two" at the start, and over headphones you can also hear him give the count just before the fast sections of the finale. Why not. Not a version to replace Stravinsky's or my favorite among the non-Stravinsky ones: Rattle (Simon Rattle: The Jazz Album), but a fine one nonetheless. The rest is of lesser interest to me, but will appeal to fans of Jazz. It alternates the cool-crooning-sentimental and the animated-boisterous, in what I suppose is the Swing to Be-Bop style so characteristic of Herman in the 1940s and 1950s (but don't trust me on this). The players seem to be having fun on some of their wild solos. The Stravinsky certainly stands out.
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