You can sample here one of the oddest casts ever assembled for a classical recording: a conductor known the world over for his "terribly authentic" revivals of early music with tiny chamber ensembles; a pianist renowned universally for his Beethoven interpretations but vilified for his forays into jazz; and another pianist famed as a jazz specialist but carped at for trying his hands at the classics. Is this a dream or a nightmare?
Actually it is neither. It came about in 1982 when these outstanding musicians participated in Munich, Germany's Klaviersommer, a festival devoted to the keyboard. The European press pounced on the idea of the ''unholy trio" of Harnoncourt, Guida, and Corea, writing reams of nonsense pro and con. (Performers "over there" get typecast as surely as they do "over here," and woe be unto those who try to break away.)
For Nikolaus Harnoncourt to ascend the podium of a huge, modern-instrument orchestra such as Amsterdam's Concertgebouw sent critical eyebrows aloft with suspicion. For Messrs. Guida and Corea to team up for Mozart, of all things, was beyond comprehension. Then came the reality: a new vision of Mozart's Two-Piano Concerto--sinewy, bold, and vital--leaving the age of powdered wigs and candle stands to the past. This was Mozart brought squarely into the present. The differences in musical personality were interesting to hear. Harnoncourt found the work's "clefts and chasms" while Guida made "a lighter and more confident impression" and Corea seemed "darker and more questing " Such gibberish meant only that those who wrote it, faced with an iconoclastic interpretation of an old war horse, were adrift in a sea of uncertainty.
Personally, I have found the performance fascinating. It has originality, energy, purpose, and poise. The Guida-Corea duo tosses Mozart's melodies and passages back and forth with a kind of sportsmanship in which Harnoncourt and the orchestra are fully involved. And the unaccompanied side is just as much fun.
Corea's "Fantasy for Two Pianos" is about 12 minutes of pure jazz, partly precomposed but mainly improvised by the performers. The melodic idea is Corea's, the two men alternate solo commentaries on it, and Guida closes down the action with an epilogue. Hot stuff not for stuffy ears!
In "Ping-Pong," Gulda's ten-minute piece for two pianists, ideas fly between the two men. The players react to each other with lightning-quick reflexes. Thanks to clearly separated channels, Corea comes from the left, Guida from the right. We can hear who's doing what, and when. The 20 fingers of the two virtuosi combine at the end in wild, exciting clusters of notes.
This recording may not suit everyone's tastes, although for me its contrasts are highly entertaining. Safe to say there is nothing else remotely like it in the Society's vast catalog. Interested in the unique? Feeling adventurous?
