George Antheil: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 3; a Jazz Symphony; Jazz Sonata

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Customer reviews

review by: date: 2006-04-19 rating:
Funny, Saucy, Jazzy Piano Music Done with Panache
I've been neither hot nor cold about the music of Antheil's I've heard before. And I wasn't prepared to like this issue all that much. But it knocked my socks off. I tend to like French-influenced music from early in the twentieth-century and these pieces certainly fill that bill. There is the clarity of texture, quartal harmonies, and insouciance so common in music of Ravel and Les Six. But, more, these works are quintessentially American in the impression they make. One hears echoes of Copland and Bernstein (although the latter came after the pieces heard here -- one wonders if the dance music for 'West Side Story' was influenced Bernstein's familiarity with the Jazz Symphony). Another composer whose jazzy solo piano music comes to mind is Erwin Schulhoff. And finally there are echoes of Kurt Weill's intentionally awkward, loose-jointed style in places. Altogether marvelous stuff, this music; I'm grateful to cpo for issuing this disc. br / br /It is rare that music makes me laugh out loud, but I guffawed a number of times, especially in the solo piano pieces -- Jazz Sonata, Can-Can, Sonatina, Death of Machines, and Little Shimmy -- by the unexpectedly eccentric rhythms and harmonies, all jazz-inflected. The same is a little less so in the two piano concertos and the Jazz Symphony (which is a piano concerto in all but name because of the important obbligato piano part). br / br /German pianist Markus Becker, with whom I was unfamiliar, has the full measure of these pieces and he is given expert support by the NDR Radio Philharmonic under Eiji Oue. There is an immediacy to the recorded sound that is lifelike. br /

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