During the colorful era
of flappers, speakeasies, and hot jazz, violinist Joe Venuti reigned
supreme among jazz string players thanks to a scintillatingly lyrical
style that he unleashed on such fanciful tunes as "Kickin' the Cat"
and "The Wild Dog," spry songs that easily struck a chord with Depression-era
jazz fans.
Venuti led a variety of
bands—including Joe Venuti's Blue Four, Blue Five, and Blue Six—performed
with seminal big band leader Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra, and recorded
with the likes of Louis Armstrong, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, and Jack
Teagarden.
As a solo artist, bandleader,
and orchestra leader—and often together with longtime collaborator
Eddie Lang, an innovative instrumentalist who helped set the standard
for jazz guitar—violinist Venuti became one of the leading jazz
and pop artists of the 1920s and '30s. Together Venuti and Lang recorded
194 classic jazz-age tracks. All are included on the newly released
eight-CD box set The Classic Columbia and Okeh Joe Venuti and Eddie
Lang Sessions (Mosaic Records MD8-213; available by mail order through
mosaicrecords.com). The set includes a 46-page booklet with detailed
biography and discography.
One of seven children, Giuseppe
Joseph Joe Venuti was born in 1903 in the Italian section of south Philadelphia.
He took up the violin in grade school. He was known as a mischievous
child; his mother once said, "How can anyone act like the devil and
play like an angel?"
But he did. Venuti could
soar with such songs as "It's the Blues," taking a two-bar, double-time,
double-stop break of hot licks and gritty slurs that show how he ushered
in a new era for jazz violin and why he stood for more than a decade
as the genre's greatest string player.
Yet Venuti, known in ballrooms
all cross America as "the wizard of the violin," never made the leap
as a successful small ensemble soloist à la Stephane Grappelli.
So his jazz-age outfits were no match for the finely honed swing bands
that flourished in the '40s under Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Benny
Goodman, and Woody Shaw. In 1943, Venuti called it quits, eventually
landing on the West Coast where he recorded sporadically and dabbled
in film work. In the 1970s, Venuti was "rediscovered" and traveled throughout
the world as a solo artist. He died in 1978.
Today, his legend looms
large due mainly to his extraordinary melodic flair, the playfulness
of his solos, and, to some extent, to his penchant for telling tall
tales. "He took hyperbole to new heights with stories upon stories of
wild escapades in the 'dizzy decade,'" jazz historian Mike Peters writes
in the extensive liner notes, "some true, others exaggerated, and still
others entirely made up, all of them now part of jazz lore."
Béla Bartók:
44 Duos for Two Violins;
György Ligeti: Ballad and Dance; György Kurtág: Ligatura.
András Keller, János Pilz, violins. (ECM New Series, 1729
CD 289 465 849 2)
Bartók wrote his
Violin Duos to introduce young students to both contemporary and folk
music, and indeed most of the pieces are based on folk tunes of many
ethnic origins. For pedagogical purposes, he arranged the pieces in
order of difficulty, but encouraged players to reorder them for performance.
Pilz and Keller, the excellent violinists of the Keller String Quartet,
have created a sequence that offers both continuity and contrast.
These Hungarian musicians,
steeped in the idiomatic tradition of their country, bring out the ethnic
element of the duets with a gypsy-like daring, playing with color and
rhythmic incisiveness. They project the mood and character of each piece
with all the means—instrumental and expressive—at their disposal.
Ligeti's Ballad is slow, lyrical, and rather conventional, the Dance
is wildly accentuated; Kurtág's Ligatura is static, mysterious,
and quite dissonant.
—Edith
Eisler
Lake Effect.
Liz Carroll, fiddle; John Doyle, guitar and bouzouki; Liz Knowles, fiddle
and viola; Michael Aharon, cello and piano; Turtle Island String Quartet:
Evan Price, violin; David Balakrishnan, baritone violin; Danny Seidenbrg,
viola; Mark Summer, cello. (Green Linnet, GLCD 1220)
Chicago-born Irish fiddler
Liz Carroll has impressed fans since nabbing the All-Ireland Senior
Fiddle Championship in 1975 at the age of 18. She has won other honors
since then, including a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage
Fellowship in 1994. In addition to being a mighty player, she's also
a highly regarded composer of new tunes in the traditional style. She
has recorded only a few albums, so this one is welcome. On Lake Effect,
Carroll serves up medleys of mostly original compositions, with a handful
of traditional numbers peppered in for good measure. Her own tunes,
while frequently a bit angular and more "modern" sounding than their
ancient counterparts, are heavily influenced by the tradition, employing
turns and entire phrases commonly found in the older tunes. In fact,
Carroll's compositions have a habit of migrating back into the "traditional"
repertoire, along with works by Ed Reavy and Jerry Holland. Carroll's
solid tone and feisty rhythmic sense is in evidence throughout the disc,
on which she's frequently accompanied on guitar or bouzouki by coproducer
John Doyle. Various tracks feature other guests, including renowned
Irish accordionist Máirtín O'Connor, whose playful riffs
brighten Carroll's jig "Mind the Dresser." The instantly recognizable
Turtle Island String Quartet sits in on the medley "Catherine Kelley's/Lake
Effect," arranged by TISQ's Evan Price. Tasty stuff.
—Elisa
M. Welch
Beethoven: Violin Concerto
in D major; Romances in F and G major.
Anne-Sophie Mutter, violin; Kurt Masur conducting the New York Philharmonic.
(Deutsche Grammophon, 471 349-2)
British violinist Anne-Sophie
Mutter, having cancelled her appearance at the New York Philharmonic's
Opening Gala in the wake of September 11, 2001 to be close to her family,
made amends by participating in Kurt Masur's farewell concerts with
the orchestra in May. This performance was recorded live on that occasion.
Mutter is, of course, a spectacular violinist, but her Beethoven is
thoroughly idiosyncratic: very free, fussy, rhetorical, and full of
exaggerations. (One wonders how the classicist Masur feels about this
interpretation.) Her tone is beautiful, but she has a rich, throbbing
vibrato, alien to the style, which she uses either at full strength
or turns off entirely. Her tempos change constantly: Generally very
slow, they keep getting slower, and every phrase ends with a ritard
and a long pause. The Rondo comes off best. The opening is crisp and
charming. The Romances are most successful overall; their "romantic,"
flexible character is more hospitable to her rhythmic liberties and
tonal inflections.
—E.E.
Portrait of the Viola.
Helen Callus, viola; Robert McDonald, piano. (ASV, CD DCA 1130)
Helen Callus, host of the
30th International Viola Congress in Seattle last June, is a violist
of the highest caliber. Her recently recorded labor of love features
viola music of four 20th-century British composers—Rebecca Clarke,
Pamela Harrison, Freda Swain, and Janetta Gould—women whose works
have been largely underappreciated. (Gould is still alive, in her seventies,
while the others are deceased.) In fact, the works by Harrison, Swain,
and Gould had never been recorded previously. Many of the selections
draw on British-Isles
folk sources, and overall the music tends to soothe rather than ignite
passions. Clarke achieved moderate success with her Viola Sonata (1918–19),
now considered to be one of the standard works of the repertoire. Among
Clarke's shorter works (including two lullabies and a song form that
appear on this disc), Morpheus stands out. Named for the god of dreams
in Greek mythology, it features a gentle dreamlike viola motif, beautifully
interpreted by Callus, that floats over flowing Debussian piano swirls.
Pamela Harrison's sonata also shows impressionist influences, but looks
forward in some passages to more aurally challenging sonorities. Most
of the works treat the instruments as equal partners, rather than relegating
the piano to a purely supporting role. Robert McDonald plays impeccably,
while Callus' viola sings and lulls with somnolent abandon.
—E.M.W.
Vivaldi: Six Late Concertos.
Giuliano Carmignola, violin; Andrea Marcon conducting the Venice Baroque
Orchestra. (Sony, SK 87733.
Bach: Arias. Angelika
Kirchschlager, mezzo soprano; Andrea Marcon conducting the Venice Baroque
Orchestra. (Sony, SK 89924)
The Physicians' Desk
Reference ought to have an entry on Giuliano Carmignola and the
Venice Baroque Orchestra, because a large dose of them can produce serious
side effects. After an hour of their aggressively virtuosic Vivaldi,
your head will throb, your hands will quiver, and your clothing will
be soaked in sweat. Too much of this kind of playing—incredible,
fleet agility and ruthlessly slashing
attacks—can be off-putting. But listen to just one or two concertos
at a time, and you can savor some of the beguiling details, particularly
the rich but not spot-lit continuo work.
This is a follow-up to an
earlier collection of unpublished Vivaldi concertos, and the music is
dramatic and engaging—but in small doses. The Venice Baroque Orchestra
shows more restraint backing young mezzo Angelika Kirchschlager (a generalist,
not an early music specialist) in a recital of Bach arias, some of them
also featuring obbligato work from Carmignola. Articulation is always
crisp, voicing clear, string tone bright, Kirchschlager's voice is warm
but not wobbly. This is an attractive over-the-counter disc; the Vivaldi
should be sold by prescription only.
—James
Reel
Aaron Copland: Complete
Works for Violin and Piano.
Paul Posnak, piano; Peter Zazofsky, violin. Ross Harbaugh, cello. (Naxos,
8-559102)
The moving and expansive
Violin Sonata of 1943 is starkly contrasted with the sparer, harder-edged,
jazz-influenced Piano Trio (Vitebsk) in this compilation of chamber
works written over Aaron Copland's lifetime. Posnak and Zazofsky excel
in the beautifully reflective movements of the 1978 Duo, yet the spiky
humor of "Ukelele Serenade" in the Two Pieces is not missed. These works
are just as rewarding as Copland's better known orchestral scores.
—Robert
Moon
Round Midnight.
The 12 Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic with Simon Rattle; Till Brönner,
flugelhorn; Janne Saksala, bass. (EMI/Blue Note, 7243 5 57319)
The 12 Cellists of the Berlin
Philharmonic are back, this time with a baker's dozen that explores
the realm of jazz, big band, show tunes, film music, spirituals, and
(gulp!) rap. Simon Rattle, chief conductor and artistic director of
the BP, presides over this tribute to American culture. For their part,
the cellists go to town, reaching deep into their trick bag to employ
a host of techniques all designed to draw the most from this far-ranging
repertoire. The CD opens with Duke Ellington's chestnut "Caravan," played
at fast tempo with the basic ostinato rhythm delivered col legno
(bowed with the wood, not the hair). By comparison, the traditional
spiritual "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen" is splendidly serene.
Other composers receiving the celli treatment include George Gershwin,
Glenn Miller, Henry Mancini ("The Theme from the Pink Panther"), Leonard
Bernstein, Thelonious Monk (the title track), Chick Corea, and even
Shigeaki Saegusa's "Ragtime." Playful and well played.
—G.C.
Charles Martin Loeffler:
Music for Four Stringed Instruments, String Quartet, Quintet in One
Movement. Da Vinci Quartet: Jerilyn Jorgensen and Joo-Mee Lee, violins;
Margaret Miller, viola; and Katherine Knight, cello. (Naxos, 8-559077)
Loeffler was an American
anomaly: He lived in the United States for 44 years, yet his music contains
virtually no American influences. These are preimpressionistic, turgid,
late romantic works, pleasantly melodic but of French European origin.
The performances and recording are excellent. Look elsewhere for music
of substantial emotional depth.
—R.M.
The Rodeo Eroded.
Tin Hat Trio: Carla Kihlstedt, violin and viola; Mark Orton, guitar,
dobro, and banjo; Rob Burger, accordion and piano. (ropeadope, 93134-2)
This threesome's music seems
to inspire reviewers to reach for some pretty zany mixed metaphors.
"If Astor Piazzola met Igor Stravinsky at a Berlin cabaret . . ." "Reminiscent
of cubist cowboy klezmer . . ." "Like Edith Piaf's backing band chugging
very strong espresso, playing Scriabin . . ." You get the idea. The
trio is the quirky core around which some very unusual fruits ripen,
as guest musicians pop in to deliver sonic nuggets. The opening "Bill"
begins freeform, then melts into a mantralike waltz for dobro, accordion,
and Kihlstedt's lovely string musings. Most of the disc's 15 tracks
are short and semisweet, and nearly all are composed by bandmembers
(the majority by Orton). One exception is the soulfully arranged standard
"Willow Weep for Me," featuring the unmistakable voice of Willie Nelson.
While not the most technically accurate crooner, he grows on you, especially
with the aid of multitracked strings delivering a faintly twisted impression
of a lush Hollywood romantic orchestra. On some tracks, Kihlstedt employs
a scratchy effect, high on the fingerboard, that makes the violin sound
like a double reed missing its instrument. Other selections jerk the
ear, blurting out brief, crazy ramblings, but invariably produce a smile.
The Rodeo Eroded is a thoroughly enjoyable listen, albeit difficult
to classify. (It may seem familiar if you grew up on some strange planet
where Scriabin was a cowboy and Edith Piaf married Igor Stravinsky.)
—E.M.W.
