What are you listening to and WHY might anyone be interested? (Vol. XI)

46 exquisite minutes of great playing and sounding of solo jazz piano. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJRRbeHpCdU

Verve original mono. I don't remember it sounding this terrific and quiet. :0

I suppose fresh tune up, Cirkus bearing and Kandid helped. 

Firs time listen. This is a powerful piece of work in the film noir like stark contrast of black and white.

Doom, fear and anger all rolled up into one. This is comfortable and chilling as walking through an abandoned insane asylum.

How could anyone top this Oistrakh's performance!

Mitropoulos/NY Phil's orchestration is equally powerful and visual. 

Joe Jackson. Look Sharp! (1979). On CD from 1990. Listening to Elvis Costello's 'Get Happy!!' LP last night made me want to hear this classic. Tight, fast music, great from start to finish.

Roger Waters. Radio K.A.O.S. On CD from 1987. Has a bit of funk.

great Marillion times

they fit good together. both hyped by DG.

Fine recording

I really enjoyed Marillion in these their very early days, the endless tours and gigs - creating a live act following - then this their first official release in 1982, Script For A Jester's Tear a year later.... then they lost me with Misplaced Childhood, especially Kayleigh and Lavender.

A Dizzy Double

Two of Dizzy Gillespie's best small-groups, from the latter part of his career, recorded for Norman Granz's Pablo Records.

Dizzy's Big 4

Personal: Dizzy Gillespie, trumpet, with guitarist Joe Pass, bassist Ray Brown, and drummer Mickey Roker.

Recorded: 1974

Bahiana

Those wanting to explore Dizzy Gillespie's Latin side should start here.

Personal: Dizzy Gillespie, trumpet, with flute and vibes player Roger Glenn, guitarists Al Gafa and Michael Howell, bassist Earl May, percussionist Paulinho da Costa and drummer Mickey Roker.

Recorded: 1975

The recording is up to Pablo's normal high standard.

Enjoy

Dave

Triggered by a Facebook post - great recording, the Reiner box is a jewel ....

Continuing with Reiner...

Double cassette, on the Dragon. Fancied a bit of bizarre whimsy. It is hilarious.

A recording very dear to my heart....

Streaming | Spotify Premium

Tool ~ Lateralus (2006)

Michel Block: Piano Works 

J.S. Bach | Godowsky:  

Andante In C Major. Aria From Sonata No. 2 In A Minor For Solo Violin, BWV1003

Johannes Brahms:

Intermezzo From "Klavierstücke Op.76" No 3 In A Flat Major

Intermezzo From "Klavierstücke Op.76" No 4 In B-Flat Major

Intermezzo From "Klavierstücke Op.76" No 7 In A Minor

Gabriel Fauré:

Nocturne No.6 In D-Flat Major, Op.63

Alexandre Scriabin:

Sonata No.2 In G-Sharp Minor, Op.19, Sonata-Fantasy,

 -Presto

- Andante

Frédéric Chopin:

Mazurka In A Minor, Op.67, No 4 (Op. Posth.)

Polonaise-Fantaisy In A-Flat Major, Op. 61

From Bach to Scriabin - it is all the same to me - some of the finest music ever written.  This disc represents such a small percent of the total possible and it is such a fine album.  Sometimes the greatest musicians are the ones you would never hear about and the masses have no interest in.

If I had 200 Sviatislav Richter discs to choose from alongside this recording, I wouldn't hesitate a millisecond before choosing a disc like this first.  Thanks Haim.

On CD, the universe's best Zep tribute band...

JUDAS PRIEST   BRITISH STEEL   album on re-master cd.

Thanks EJ for posting this.  How could I have missed this one?  I have rectified this problem posthaste.

...as he resisted his tendency towards an endless flow of notes (which he reserves for the piano part - in other words, while the pianist has to work brutally hard, the violin gets the good tunes).....

This is a good point you make here and I would say though that the majority of listeners do not understand this.  The majority of chamber music is notorious for this imbalance (complexity of string instrument vs piano).

One reason for this is that most composers were pianists first or at least wrote most of the score at he piano.  Perfect example is Medtner here.

The second point I would make though is that everyone should thank the romantic and 20th century periods for doing something about this imbalance and opening up or coming out of the shell of old ways / old styles.

In a way, a composer like Brahms starts to move the standards for bringing a violin and cello into the fold more in the piano trios, for example.  It's closer to a three way with involvement of each player carrying some difficulty and sharing the melody but still a long way from equal.   The pianist still holds the lion's share of the difficulty.  Some of it is simply just brutal to play for the pianist.  

Ravel's piano trio is really a masterpiece in this regard of upping the game for the string players.  Something like the Mendelssohn D minor piano trio is a good mid way example of strings playing the easy melody while the pianist sweats.  The ratio is easily 9 to 1 here of notes a pianist has to play for every not the strings players have to play.  This means playing triplets to a dotted half note (3 beats).

Haydn piano trios push this even further.  Typically, the poor cellist is really just following or reinforcing the bass note of the piano (as in a basso continuo).

Thank goodness for evolution up to a certain point, until a few humans perfected and figured things out, and then that extinction occurred at some point in the 20th century and music as a whole died off leaving a mostly preserved record. 

A general thing to remember in strings vs keyboard.  A string players really only has to master two things well before they rise to the top.  They have to play in tune and they have to know how to make it sound beautiful (yes, this is one reason why recording quality plays a major part in music making).  Granted, these two aspects are difficult to achieve at first but if you get this mastered at a younger age you are really set mostly.  Of course, a keyboardist in contrast can do nothing about being in tune other than to recognize this and call the tuner.  But on stage, what it is at the moment is what it is.  String players have to come to the piano and play to it.   Otherwise, a keyboardist has to technically master melody and harmony.  In chamber music, the string players are really like the one man soloist or the guy walking down the street and whistling the tune.  The keyboardist is mostly taking on the role of a whole orchestra and has to hold everything together.

In my experience, violinists are mostly the most nasty (because they are typically the most arrogant as well).  They come to the table saying this is how it is going to be.  I have the tune and this is the tempo. Then the pianist has to deal with the monstrous job of keeping up.  And that means for say Mendelssohn playing 50 pages of music on the piano to 2 or 3 for the strings.  Later romantic likeBrahms or Arensky might be 70 or 80 pages to 3 or 4 for a string player.

Doug,

Somehow I came across a review of Michel Block's disc while hunting for Cynthia Raim's Brahms recording (which I still can't find) and decided to try him. I never heard of him before:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Block

Alan Feinberg's adventurous keyboard works.

If you want an album to stretch your system in all directions then this is the one...

Still brilliant to my ears but exposes the limitations of the low end of my system where you can hear the gaps where sounds should be occasionally.