Passion rather than insouciance is Pires’s keynote. Here is no soft, moonlit option but an intensity and drama that scorn all complacent salon or drawing-room expectations. How she relishes Chopin’s central storms, creating a vivid and spectacular yet unhistrionic contrast with all surrounding serenity or ‘embalmed darkness’. The con fuoco of Op. 15 No. 1 erupts in a fine fury and in the first Nocturne, Op. 9 No. 1, Pires’s sharp observance of Chopin’s appassionato marking comes like a prophecy of the coda’s sudden blaze. Such resolution and psychological awareness make you realize that Chopin, like D. H. Lawrence, may well have thought that “there must be a bit of fear, and a bit of horror in your life”. Chopin, Pires informs us in no uncertain terms, was no sentimentalist.
It's a recording that just a few years ago would have been mainstream: a "name" pianist (albeit one much less well known in the U.S. than elsehwere), who has been playing Mozart's piano concertos since childhood, joins forces with a name conductor with whom she has frequently collaborated, leading a modern-instrument orchestra of some 70 players, with the results released on a major international-conglomerate label. Now it's distinctly unusual. But lo, there's value in the old ways. Portuguese-Brazilian pianist Maria-João Pires is a lifelong Mozart specialist, but she still has new things to say in two of Mozart's most popular piano concertos. You can chalk it up to her Buddhist outlook if you like: her readings of the Piano Concerto No. 27 in B flat major, K. 595, and Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466, might be described as detached without being lifeless. Her approach is most startling in the Piano Concerto No. 20, where her no-drama shaping of the material runs sharply counter to type. Sample the piano's entrance in the first movement, where it offers a twisting, tense elaboration of the main theme that is far removed from its source material. Generally pianists use this to raise the tension level, but Pires lets the unusually shaped, chromatic line speak for itself with fine effect.
The repertoire of this January 1977 Paris session consists entirely of Dupree originals. Typical of his cheeky humour and bubbling good spirits (Hamhock And Lima Beans, Let Me In I'm Drunk, Phone Call), it nevertheless reveals the natural sadness of the blues, never far from the surface in any of his work (Who Do You Love?, Let's Try Over Again). Indeed, Jack's personal life weighed more heavily in his songs than, because of the fun aspect, is generally realised. At this time, just recently divorced and separated from his young children, he was a lonely man, and destined to remain so.
We have rounded out the present CD with five titles from a 1983 session on which Champion Jack Dupree is accompanied by singer Brenda Bell and guitarist Louisiana Red.
Maria Muldaur has been taken by Bob Dylan's music from the very start. They were on the coffeehouse circuit in New York in the early '60s, and she's had occasion to sing his praises from the stage and in Martin Scorsese's film No Direction Home. And while other artists from Joan Baez to Judy Collins have cut entire albums of Dylan's tunes, none of them feels quite like this one. Muldaur, a fine blues and jazz singer, has taken the songs form Dylan's romantic canon and has fashioned them in her own image without losing their original bite, wonder, and humor. Accompanied by her road band and a slew of guests that include Amos Garrett, Danny Caron, and Suzy Thompson, she has created a dreamy, languid, memorable song cycle.
The sounds of New Orleans have always been in Maria Muldaur's blood and catalog. Dr. John appeared on her first solo album back in 1974 and she arguably hit a career high point on her first full-fledged love letter to the city, 1992's Louisiana Love Call. She returns to the Crescent City for this 2011 release, employing veteran New Orleans keyboardist Dave Torkanowsky as musical director and "facilitator" and returning to the swampy "Bluesiana music" sound that includes heavy doses of gospel and blues along with touches of jazz, soul, and funk. This is a major shift from her past two acoustic jug band releases and plays to her sultry strengths as a vocalist who can convincingly sing any style of music she feels passionate about. Muldaur revisits a few tracks she has previously recorded (an earlier version of "As an Eagle Stirreth in Her Nest" was included on 1976's Sweet Harmony) but with a band that features guitarist Shane Theriot and Subdudes bassist Johnny Allen, they and the rest of the handpicked material boil with fresh enthusiasm.
This album presents a mix of studio tracks and altered live recordings from Frank Zappa's hard rock period. The tone is definitely less rock-oriented than on Them or Us, only "Stick Together" and "Cocaine Decisions" qualifying as such…