Spinning Out

Pierre-Laurent Aimard continues to present a repertoire for the piano that is never less than imaginative and is always compelling. The Dvorák Piano Concerto is rarely heard, not because it lacks beauty or inventive scoring for both piano and orchestra, but because the piece has gained the reputation of the 'Tristan' of concertos. Enter Pierre-Laurent Aimard and all of that changes.

Flavio Boltro is undoubtedly one of the greatest representatives of the jazz trumpet in Europe. Michel Petrucciani understood this very well by calling him to be part of one of his best bands. Flavio is a creative in the true sense of the word: he knows how to create his own music. Far from being content to play a piece, he gives life to it! For Flavio, live reproduction of existing music is not enough, it must be transfigured. It's as if he painted each note with his personal vision of the world.

Somehow the grandfather of British blues still had the fire in his belly to record a strong album almost 40 years after he began his storied career. Buddy Whittington acquits himself well as the latest in a long line of hotshot guitarists for this multi-instrumentalist, who still does his best work on harmonica. He still admires long-dead bluesman J.B. Lenoir, including "Voodoo Music" here. A lot of credit for this strong outing goes to R.S. Field, lyricist and sometime producer for Webb Wilder. "Long Story Short" would pass for a Wilder tune were it not for Mayall's distinctive voice.

This disc, particularly well recorded in 1986, brings one of the best versions of the symphony coupled with an equally fine delivery of one of the finest for the late symphonic poems. Symphonic is the key word here as this symphony is the most non-nationalist symphony in the Dvorak canon and is without much doubt the most purely symphonic creation as well as being the most tautly argued and dramatic of the nine symphonies. Jarvi's style of conducting these symphonies is to take a straight view and play them very much as Dvorak wrote them. There are therefore no undue changes of tempi, either slowing down to underline climaxes or speeding up to create artificial excitement.