Friedrich GULDA (1930-2000)
Symphony in G (1970) [35:41]
Entrée [6:14]
Variations [11:34]
Play Piano Play - No. 4 [4:04]
Prelude and Fugue [4:35]
Fritz PAUER (1943-2012)
Meditations - Etude No. 2 [6:27]
Friedrich Gulda (piano)
Stuttgart Radio Orchestra and South West Radio Dance Orchestra/Friedrich Gulda
rec. November 1970, Stuttgart Villa Berg (Symphony) and June 1971, live recording at the Heidelberg Jazz Days, Heidelberg Jazz Stage
SWR MUSIC SWR19096CD [68:48]
Not much seems to be known regarding the circumstances of the composition of Gulda’s Symphony in G. It wasn’t a commission and has never been performed in concert. Indeed, this studio recording, made in Stuttgart’s Villa Berg in November 1970, may well be the work’s only performance thus far and even its existence on SWR tape has been overlooked for decades.
Gulda’s large-scale classical compositions tended to obey the verities of sonata development and the Symphony in G is no different in that respect. It features two bands, the Stuttgart Radio Orchestra and the South West Radio Dance Orchestra and is, loosely, a Third Stream work, inspiration for which is rooted in Gunther Schuller’s experimentation, but it possesses other features – some of an almost innocent kind – that reflect Gulda’s own classical heritage. It’s known that it was composed in the annus mirabilis of 1970, the year which also saw his Greatest Hit, his Variations on Light My Fire and shares something of that work’s vitality. Nevertheless, it is a strange melange of big percussion, naïve nineteenth century themes, a passage that might almost be Haydn-does-Jazz, and a loose-limbed jazz orchestral ethos. A sax solo during the first movement prefaces its big blowsy ending. Gulda really covers bases in the slow movement, which is ABA, the outer sections being almost Marcello-like in their beauty, and where Gulda encourages a kind of Gil Evans-influenced sense of luminous modal writing before an old school brass plunger solo and a wailing trumpet solo take things in a righteous direction. I didn’t overlook Gulda’s voicing for the saxes, which is straight out of the Benny Carter school. The
Adagio opening of the finale conforms to the loose Romanticised Baroque feel, before an
Allegro opens out into a massive fanfare jig. The celebratory vigour is enlivening, and electric guitar and a hi-hat solo sections preface a conventional extended drum solo.
If you’re bewildered reading of this range of influences, timbres, colours and rhythms, you should know that there are others I’ve clearly not detected. It’s a pretty bewildering piece to listen to, to be frank, the kind of woolly work that reaches out in all directions and never quite finds a musical home. It’s splendidly played and obviously authoritatively conducted by its composer. I very much liked it and feel sympathetic to what Gulda was trying to do and if you fancy a slice of Third Stream-Baroque-Classical-Romance you may want to lend an ear.
The remainder of the disc comes from Gulda’s solo piano performance at Heidelberg Jazz Days in June 1971. He plays four of his own pieces and one by Fritz Pauer who five years earlier had won a prize in a jazz competition Gulda had organised. Pauer’s piece is Etude No. 2 from his Meditations, an ostinato study for the left hand which allows the right to improvise above it. Gulda’s Entrée integrates Erroll Garner’s influence into his more contemporary musical lexicon, something he was prone to do. Variations is a more extensive work, ranging across filigree, rolling patterns and blues-drenched cadences, and the blues, always a constant companion of Gulda, runs throughout No. 4 from Play Piano Play. His jazz Prelude and Fugue ends the recital; it’s clever and accomplished, deeply Bachian, and rightly one of his own favourite compositions.
In playing time, this disc is divided fairly evenly between the Symphony and the solo pieces. The Symphony is making its first appearance on disc. Sound quality is excellent, notes fine.
Jonathan Woolf
