Jurgen Hangenlocher - Leap In The Dark (Intuition Records, 2011)

Jurgen Hagenlocher
Leap In the Dark
Intuition Records
2011
* * * *
The biggest change in small ensemble jazz since the formation of Miles Davis' second great quintet in the mid 1960s has been the emergence of instrumentalist/composers producing recordings of all original compositions.  it is that natural evolution that occurs when the tried and true grows tired and better and better artists emerge to carry a given art to the next level.  Tenor saxophonist Jurgen Hangenlocher assembles an outstanding band to perform eight of his compositions that can only be described as contemporary jazz that wen into the right direction rather than the "smooth" direction.  David Kikoski's electric piano roots the sound just beyond the acoustic realm.  There is nothing experimental about this music (often a hallmark of the un-listenable).  Smart melodies and engaging arrangements characterize this semi-progressive offering.

Handel: Messiah - New York Philharmonic, Leonard Berstein (Sony, 1998)

Handel: Messiah
New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein
Sony Classical
1998
* * * 
Leonard Bernstein's Messiah is very much an American affair that thumbs its nose at most of the last 30 years of period performance.  It is very much a product of the late 1950s when it was recorded.  If the listener is looking for a historically-informed, period-instrument performance, run, do not walk, from this recording.  However, if the listener yearns for a full-bodied, meat and potatoes performance that does away with the traditional three-parts in favor of Ebenezer Prout's two-part Victorian Edition, all performed on modern instruments at late Romantic tempi, then this is the recording.  There is nothing not to like.  It is a different interpretation than most recent performances.  But Bernstein was Bernstein and that is all that need be said.

Harry Allen - Rhythm On The River (Challenge, 2011)

Harry Allen
Rhythm on the River
Challenge Records
2011
* * * *
Harry Allen is a keeper of the flame.  He specializes in the type of jazz made between Bix Beiderbecke Stan Getz.   He is a ballad specialist who does with the tenor saxophone what Frank Sinatra did this the Great American Songbook, that is...transformed it.  Rhythm on the River is a thematic collection of songs having in their title the word, "river."  Allen selects music that is as far and wide as Stephen Foster's 1851 "Old Folks at Home (Swanee River)" to Arthur Hamilton's "Cry Me A River" one hundred years later.  Joined by crack cornetist Warren Vache, Allen recalls the near-New Orleans-Dixieland of "Riverboat Suffle" while playing his best Bean on "The Rhythm On the River."  His tone is dry and vibrato-less, though not as stark as Lester Young's.  Sumptuous and sensual in a "Jazz Age" sort of way, Harry Allen demonstrates his wares well.

Michael Buble - Christmas (Reprise, 2011)

Michael Buble
Christmas
Reprise Records
2011

I so very much want to dismiss Michael Buble as just one more Sinatra knock-off.  Having put it off as long as I could, I spun Buble's Christmas beneath the laser and, lo and behold, we have a traditional pop music holiday disc to really crow about.  Buble's pronunciation, enunciation, tone and timbre are simply perfect.  The charts and arrangements are exceptional.  What sucks about this recording are the duets, particularly "White Christmas" with Shania Twain, who gurgles and chokes her way through Irving Berlin's masterpiece.  I am not sure what Buble's handlers were thinking, but I am glad they quit smoking that shit before the end of recording and before they could have completely ruined it.

Wilhelm Furtwangler - Recordings 1942-1944, Vol. 1

Wilhelm Furtwangler - Recordings 1942-1944, Vol. 1
Beethoven - Handel - Mozart - Schubert - Weber
Berliner Philharmoniker
Deutsche Grammophon
1989

Wilhelm Furtwangler's live wartime recordings bear a stigma not unlike the any other fundamentally good entity tainted with national Socialism at the time.  The Nazis claimed Beethoven and other composers as the soundtrack of their own delusion.  They also had considerable musical firepower in the Berlin Philharmonic under the baton of Wilhelm Furtwangler ("Hitler's Conductor").  These recordings are regulatory for their anger and militancy.  I don't know is that is what Furtwangler intended, but these performances bristle with authoritarian attitude and swagger.  Schubert's Eighth Symphony here could just as well been conducted by Richard Wagner with its air raid blasting brass.  Odd man out here is Handel's Concerto Gross Op. 6 Nr. 10, which comes off strangely Mozartian.  Nevertheless, this is essential music, produced under duress, that will never be made like this again.