A Night With Friedrich Gulda
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Friedrich Gulda, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Genre:
Instrumental
Label: Arthaus Musik
Magazine Review Date: AW2014
Media Format: Digital Versatile Disc
Media Runtime: 85
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 101 674
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Sonata for Piano No. 6 |
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Composer
Friedrich Gulda, Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Composer |
Sonata for Piano No. 12 |
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Composer
Friedrich Gulda, Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Composer |
Sonata for Piano No. 18 |
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Composer
Friedrich Gulda, Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Composer |
Fantasia |
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Composer
Friedrich Gulda, Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Composer |
Author: Philip Clark
The atmosphere is glitzy Las Vegas ballroom. The audience are gagging for a good time and Gulda is received rapturously. So bright are the spotlights that they blur against the film and I feared at first that the recorded sound might be equally tinny and unresponsive. But watched through headphones on my MacBook the sound has remarkable clarity and definition.
Gulda’s Mozart – perhaps not surprisingly – has a lilt and a swing that is aided and abetted by a clean-cut, almost Baroque sensibility that holds Romanticism in disdain. When he begins the finale of K576 he counts himself in and arches his back like a jazzman finding his groove. And although it’s tempting to comment more on the juxtaposition of styles than the musical material itself, let no one doubt that this is top-drawer Mozart-playing – the Adagio of K332 s(w)ings with the grace of scat singing, and I like the way Gulda suddenly lurches towards the minor without any rubato or preparation.
And then party time! The Paradise Trio (featuring the excellent Hammond organist Barbara Dennerlein) played authentic fusion jazz, backbeats care of drummer Jojo Mayer. Gulda’s solo on Dennerlein’s ‘Give it up’ – a tune derived from Lee Morgan’s ‘The Sidewinder’ – takes a line for a walk on the wild side before grappling with Brubeckian block chords. Gulda launches the techno set and then dances around the stage like a version of his own younger self. All that’s left – and this is not very politically correct, I know – is for Gulda to introduce his dancing girls, who gyrate and twerk around his keyboard. This night with Friedrich Gulda wasn’t over yet.
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