Customer Reviews

Solo

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Oscar spends the better part of an hour doing things on the piano
that can't be done on the piano. I have recordings of the most
technically demanding works of Liszt, Alkan, and Sorabji, as well
as the Ligeti Etudes. In comparison with the Peterson performances of Corcovado, Autumn Leaves, and Sweet Georgia Brown(just to mention a few), the works of the above mentioned
composers seem much less difficult to me than they did before I
heard this recording! However, this album wouldn't rate even
one star if it only had dazzling technique to offer the listener.

It is great because of how Oscar uses his technique. He approaches these songs as multifaceted tone poems and uses tempo changes, huge variations in loudness and softness,and the full range of the piano to bring out every facet in each of them. Despite the volcanic eruption of sound, not one note is wasted. The music laughs,whispers, shouts, cries, and dances. I don't own a greater recording of solo piano music in any genre. I hope enough people buy it to make it a best seller. It Deserves it!

Down Beat: Excellent-to-classic. Solo is yet another previously unreleased discovery, a pair of 1972 solo concerts that, in addition to being relatively rare, are utterly dazzling in their intensity and rapidly shifting diversity of décor, dynamics, tempo and tone. The arpeggios swoop and dive like tracer fire in a program rich with both fluttering rose petals and hard rain power. -- John McDonough

I bought this album after hearing the Hogtown Blues played on the radio. I wasn't sure I believed it was a single person playing the piece; surely it had to be for piano four hands. Yet it was just Oscar. As an amatuer classical pianist for 35 years I'm usually critical of piano playing on recordings, but every time I listen to Oscar I'm just flat-out amazed...his ability is universes above most anybody I've heard. All I can do is appreciate his mastery of the instrument. This is one of the most amazing recordings I own. And when he accompanies Ella on other albums...

For decades, I have loved Oscar's playing, and I have amassed a wide collection of his work on vinyl and CD, including -- I am not making this up -- an obscure record of him singing! (Oscar's voice, which sounds like it was influenced by Nat Cole's, isn't bad, but he definitely made the right choice by sticking with piano.)

I can appreciate other reviewers who are dazzled by Peterson's playing on this disk; not since Tatum has a pianist had such command of the instrument and dedicated it with such focus to the jazz idiom. And few jazz pianists have been willing to take on the ridiculously demanding job of solo piano. Tatum was of course the master; most efforts since then have been mixed. Peterson is one of the only players who can pull it off.

That said, this particular collection -- drawn from a couple of live concerts in the 70s -- is some of Oscar's most hackneyed, least inspired playing ever. Sure, all the dazzling mechanical runs are there in their splendor, but there's not much else to distinguish this CD. Oscar is on auto-pilot. Yes, his auto-pilot is better than anybody else's, but if it's Oscar Peterson playing solo you want, you should avoid this disk and pick up Tracks, which is a dazzling tour-de-force of everything solo jazz piano could ever be -- and a lovely, intimate recording to boot. If you already own that album -- as I did -- you will be disappointed by "Solo", which is all sizzle and no steak.

(Another favorite, which happens to include several solo tracks, is Exclusively for My Friends Oscar's playing on that 4-disk collection, and the playing of Sam Jones and Ray Brown on bass, and Bobby Durham and Ed Thigpen on drums, is not to be believed.)