Jazz Violin Concertos
Herbert Berger (b.1969)
‘Metropoles Suite’: Concerto for violin and string orchestra (2014)
Friedrich Gulda (1930-2000)
‘Wings’; A concert piece for solo violin, string orchestra and rhythm section (1973)
Sabina Hank (b.1976)
‘Three songs for an abandoned angel’: Concerto for solo violin, string orchestra and drums (2008)
Christian Lettner (drums)
Orchestra Musica Vitae/Benjamin Schmid (violin)
rec. 2020-21, Nygatan 6, Växjö, Sweden
Gramola 99284 [63]

Benjamin Schmid has had a long-term enthusiasm for jazz-based composition as well, of course, for the central repertoire, many of which recordings you can find on Oehms. In fact, for the intrepid Schmid-admirer there is a 20-CD box of his recordings for the label.

Schmid has, however, also recorded jazz for Gramola. The album Hot Club Jazz (review) was an homage, but not only an homage, to the Quintet of the Hot Club of France and an album I liked very much, showing Schmid’s jazz chops in like-minded company – and those chops were admirable. The concertos of Herbert Berger, Sabina Hank and Friedrich Gulda add to his repertoire on disc, recorded with the Swedish chamber ensemble Orchestra Musica Vitae, of which he is the new Artistic Director. These are the three jazz concertos for which he has advocated over the years – the Gulda for longest, then the Hank, which was written for him, but also Berger’s 2014 concerto. This triptych of Austrian jazz concertos offers a credo of sorts for the adventurous Schmid.

Gulda’s Wings is a ‘concert piece for solo violin, string orchestra and rhythm section’ written in 1973 (Schmid says in his booklet notes that it was written in the mid-1970s but I think he’s a couple of years out). Where he’s dead right, though, is in locating its Tzigane-like inheritance. It was written for the young Silvia Marcovici, who enjoyed something of a vogue at the time – maybe you have come across her televised performance of the Glazunov concerto in 1972 at a concert celebrating Stokowski’s long association with the LSO. The concerto’s ‘tuning up’ figures are interrupted by Ravelian solo writing à la Hongroise, the orchestra interjecting very briefly; otherwise, it’s solo violin all the way in the opening movement. The slow movement that follows is on the grandiloquent side, supported by a back-beat and sounding decidedly sultry-Spanish with plenty of opportunities for improvisation. Baroque hints imbue the third movement before the rock groove of the finale incites ever more frenzied solo playing and percussive support.

Chronologically the next work is Hank’s ‘Three songs for an abandoned angel’: Concerto for solo violin, string orchestra and drums, composed in 2008 to a commission from Schmid and premiered by him later that year, to be played again in 2010 at a concert devoted both to her work and to Gulda’s, given that it marked the tenth anniversary of his death. Hank doesn’t write much, if anything, substantive about her work and it’s left to Schmid to add a few admiring words. It’s notable for Hank’s use of the drum kit, using it to propel the soloist or the orchestra. Themes are very attractive, and all this encourages the soloist to swing elegantly but hard. The slow movement has its folkloric moments and the strings are attractively terraced, the music being full of fresh, open sonorities. A tight cadenza for the violinist opens classically, all of which is a prelude to the enticing sonorities of the finale with rich unisons and intriguing figures.

Though Gulda and Hank both incorporate percussion into their works, its use functions differently. Herbert Berger doesn’t employ percussion in his ‘Metropoles Suite’: Concerto for violin and string orchestra, instead opening with a great big walking bass figure. Schmid slinks his way into the musical argument, unleashing some fast runs, then Berger allows the full string ensemble to take up the argument. This is a work that ‘represents four cities’ in the composer’s words – Salzburg, Barcelona, Paris and finally Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. The Barcelona movement evokes a sinuous melancholy that may remind one of Piazzolla as the violin moves reflectively over bass accompaniment. This resolves into a jaunty Parisian musette with opportunities for Grappelli-like passages, the chamber orchestra supporting the pirouetting soloist with rich lower string tuttis. The finale unleashes a fine drive, allowing regular opportunities for Schmid to improvise and ending in toe-tapping brio.

The question of how much is improvised and how much notated is always a thorny issue in these kinds of works. Berger allows improvisation in all four movements, Gulda principally in the last movement, and Hank in the outer movements and in the cadenza, which is a Schmid interpolation: he based it on an earlier composition of his own.

Aside from Schmid himself and his ensemble, one shouldn’t fail to salute drummer Christian Lettner who plays in two concertos with vitality and finesse. The improvisational limits asked of Schmid are those that roughly bind Grappelli and Eddie South, Stuff Smith and Svend Asmussen. None of the composers really requires a Jean-Luc Ponty level of modernism.

The recording has been finely judged and the smallish ensemble comes across very nicely indeed as expert microphone placements reap their rewards. Schmid can sport a feather in his cap for this adventurous and wholly satisfying trio of works.

Jonathan Woolf

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