Gulda Remastered: Conducting and Playing Jazz

courtesy of Naxos of America

The third of the five albums of Stuttgart performances by the Austrian pianist and composer Friedrich Gulda was released on the SWR>>music label almost exactly one month ago. The title of the album is Jazz, and it consists of only a single CD. (Note that Amazon.com seems to have bailed on this release, perhaps due to the pandemic lockdown; so the hyperlink for downloading is from a Presto Classical Web page.) The content begins with a 1970 studio recording of Gulda conducting his composition “Symphony in G,” scored for the combination of a classical orchestra (the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra) and the Südfunk Tanzorchester (southern radio dance orchestra). This is followed by the solo piano set that Gulda performed at the 1971 Heidelberger Jazztage. The entire album again involves remastered tapes recorded by Südwestrundfunk (SWR, southwest broadcasting), the public radio service for the southwest of Germany.

“Symphony in G” is a particularly unique offering. The piece has never been presented in public, meaning that the 1970 studio session is the only available document of a performance. In other words the album provides the world premiere recording of the composition. The title suggests a playful nod to both George Gershwin’s “Concerto in F,” composed in 1925, and Maurice Ravel’s “Concerto in G,” composed in 1931; but nothing about Gulda’s composition suggests either of these two composers. The booklet notes by Thomas Knapp suggest a connection with the “Third Stream” movement championed by Gunther Schuller; but Gulda’s rhetoric is a far cry from the sterile abstractions of any of the Third Stream composers. If anything Gulda swings too far into the schmaltzy side, only really breaking loose when the drummer is allowed an extended improvised solo in the third movement.

On the other hand Gulda’s talents as a jazz pianist have already been encountered in his first SWR album of solo recitals, both in his encore selections and the “Perspektive No. 1” trio improvisation. Of the five tracks on the Jazz album, four are Gulda’s own compositions (including the prelude-fugue coupling which is taken as an encore at two of those solo recitals). The other track is a selection by another Austrian jazz pianist, Fritz Pauer, an étude, which is the second piece in a set of five compositions collectively entitled Meditationen. These all serve up a consistently jazzier spirit than is encountered in the symphony, not to mention a healthy dose of Gulda’s prodigious keyboard technique.