Edward Tubin, John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy, The Clientele

2023-07-28 16:00:00
Eduard Tubin
Underbrush
Eduard Tubin: Suite from the ballet Kratt, Music for strings. Grazyna Bacewicz: Concerto for string orchestra; Witold Lutoslawski: Funeral Music. Estonian Festival Orchestra, Paavo Järvi (conductor). Cover of the album “Kratt”, by Eduard Tubin, by the Estonian Festival Orchestra, Paavo Järvi (conductor). ALPHA CLASSICS/OUTHERE MUSIC

More than the national character (Estonia, Poland), especially highlighted by the Suite that Eduard Tubin (1905-1982) took from his ballet Underbrush (using material of folk origin), it is the aesthetic aspect that dominates this program articulated around works for string orchestra, most of which have never been performed outside their country of origin. Written between 1944 and 1963, the scores gathered here all illustrate the neoclassicism in vogue after the Second World War. Eduard Tubin, a major reference in Estonian music before the emergence of Arvo Pärt, subscribed to it in the piquant way of a Stravinsky in Underbrush (term designating an evil elf) then in the tormented mind of a Prokofiev on the occasion of a very dramatic music for strings. The Concerto for string orchestra, by Grazyna Bacewicz (1909-1969), is distinguished by a sober lyricism that seems specific to the Polish composer who has recently been rediscovered. Alas, for Tubin as for Bacewicz, the neighborhood with the unclassifiable Witold Lutoslawski (1913-1994) is not rewarding. Their works seem very academic in a register that the famous funeral music written in memory of Béla Bartok invests with an exceptional quality of deployment, unequally rendered however by Paavo Järvi, who favors brilliance to the detriment of density. Pierre Gervasoni

1 CD Alpha Classics/Outhere Music.

John Coltrane avec Eric Dolphy
Evenings at The Village Gate Pochette de l’album « Evenings at The Village Gate », de John Coltrane avec Eric Dolphy. IMPULSE ! RECORDS/UNIVERSAL MUSIC

August 1961, saxophonist John Coltrane (1926-1967) is at the New York club The Village Gate. With him, the pianist McCoy Tyner, the drummer Elvin Jones, with whom he has played regularly since 1960, the double bassist Reggie Workman, who will be succeeded, at the end of December 1961, by Jimmy Garrison, thus forming what will become one of the most famous in the history of jazz. Also present are clarinetist, flautist and saxophonist Eric Dolphy (1928-1964) and, on some evenings, double bassist Art Davis. Some recordings of these concerts have been found, monophonic, made with a microphone hanging from the ceiling above the stage, specifies the booklet ofEvenings at the Village Gate, which brings together these documents. The drums and the winds are quite present, the basses a bit hazy, the piano more distant. But the music makes up for these faults, Coltrane and Dolphy in a beautiful musical relationship, Elvin Jones, torrential. Of the five themes present in this disc, we will retain Dolphy’s flute scrolls during My Favorite Things ; the lyricism of Coltrane and the flights of Tyner on Impressions ; the frenzy of more than twenty minutes ofAfrica. For this only trace in concert of the composition recorded in the studio a few weeks earlier with a group of winds, Evenings at the Village Gate is essential. Sylvain Siclier

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