The scene – the Vienna Festival of 1964, hitherto regarded as an impenetrable haven of classical music and arts. The music – big band with Gulda’s piano fronting it. The musicians – drawn from the top ranks of American expatriates in Europe, plus the pick of European jazz instrumentalists as required to complete the group. For the result, read on!
Whatever the composer intended this music to be, it is not jazz. It is obviously designed round the conventional structure of a piano concerto, but lacks the subtle blending of the solo instrument and band which these great operas demand. There are several pretty bits with simple rhythm which are obviously intended to be the jazz ‘inclusion’, but they fail to match even the slightly pedantic efforts by people like André Previn with big band or orchestra. The band parts offer little scope for the soloists, other than the piano. Men like Benny Bailey, Jimmy Woode and Sahib Shihab, not to mention Tubby Hayes, Ray Premru and Jimmy Deuchar, are well submerged in the tumult of sound. The concept of this work, and the lesser Veiled Old Land, are admirable, but the results, from a jazz viewpoint, are negative, and I regret that the album has been issued under such a guise.
Discography
Music For Piano And Band, No. 2 – 1st & 2nd Movements (25 min) – Music For Piano And Band, No. 2 – 3rd Movement; The Veiled Old Land (20½ min)
Friedrich Gulda (p); Mel Lewis (d); Jimmy Woode (bs); Benny Bailey, Jimmy Deuchar, Idrees Sulieman (tpts); Ray Premru (bs. tpt); Sahib Shihab, Heinz Bigler, Tubby Hayes, Lennart Jansson (reeds); Erich Kleinschuster, Rudolph Josl (tbns); Alfie Reece (tba); Pierre Cavalli (g). Vienna, 1964.
(CBS BPG 62523 12inLP 33s. 2d.)
