Dave Brubeck is of
course best-known as a jazz pianist,
and as the author of such favourites
as Unsquare Dance and Take
Five. What is not so well known
is that he was a pupil of Darius Milhaud,
and, at eighty-four, has a substantial
corpus of ‘classical’ music to his name.
The pianist John Salmon,
who has long been a champion of Brubeck’s
music, has assembled this programme
of his works for piano, including the
large-scale Chromatic Fantasy Sonata
after J.S. Bach. Salmon himself,
who is now on the staff of the University
of North Carolina where this was recorded,
collaborated in the creation of several
of the works, and The Salmon Strikes
is, the composer tells us, a tribute
to him.
The main work on the
disc, Chromatic Fantasy Sonata,
is in four movements. Each one contains
references to Bach, in the form both
of actual quotations from the music
– the opening cites, as you might expect,
the beginning of Bach’s Chromatic
Fantasy – and of the thematic idea
based on B-A-C-H (which in our notation
equals Bb–A–C– B). It’s fascinating
to hear Brubeck play resourcefully with
these ideas, allowing jazz rhythms and
harmonic and melodic inflections to
crop up quite naturally.
This is an impressive
piece though ultimately I feel it lacks
a real emotional and aesthetic centre.
It also tends to drift rather, particularly
the first movement, and quite unexpectedly,
I found Liszt coming to mind. This is
in part due to the use of the BACH motive,
but there’s more to it than that. The
two composers share a fundamentally
improvisatory style, frequently exploring
ideas in a way that is dictated by their
hands and fingers rather than their
musical minds. In an actual extemporisation,
whether in a jazz or a classical context,
this is no problem; in the context of
a work composed reflectively, it does
weaken the impact of the music.
I do enjoy the final
Chaconne, however, which, though
easily the longest movement, is also
the most disciplined because of the
form. Mind you, it’s not a true Chaconne
in the Baroque sense, more a set of
free variants over a faintly modal jazz
‘riff’ or ‘ostinato’. In this movement,
Brubeck shows great rhythmic ingenuity,
and there are echoes of the Bernstein
of West Side Story as well as
an unmistakable moment of Take Five
texture!
The sonata is followed
by five of Brubeck’s Two-part Adventures
which I was much more comfortable
with. They are essentially miniatures,
which show the influence of Milhaud
and Les Six. Bach Again has a
delightful melody, while Chasin’
Yourself is unashamed jazz. These
pieces, not technically demanding, would
make excellent repertoire for competent
young or amateur pianists.
The disc is completed
by Tritonis, a gritty and quite
involved piece based on the musical
interval of the tritone or augmented
4th, The Salmon Strikes,
a vigorous piece dedicated to the disc’s
pianist, and the final gently impressionistic
Rising Sun.
Salmon is the ideal
interpreter for this music; he has a
flawless technique, an absolutely sure
sense of rhythm, and keeps a firm grip
on the structure, preventing the waywardness
of parts of the sonata from becoming
an insurmountable problem. The recording
too is excellent; the piano sound is
quite dry, in a way that wouldn’t suit
Rachmaninov or Chopin, but is entirely
appropriate in this music, so much of
which has a neo-classical feel to it.
This is a valuable addition to Naxos’s
‘American Classics’ series.
Gwyn Parry-Jones
John Salmon, piano 