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Music : The Jazz Album
Rating: 
- BUT IS IT JAZZ?
Normally I don't have much time for classification of music beyond good/bad or interesting/dull but since DGG have chose to promote this as "The Jazz Album" it beomes an issue.
If only they had called it "The Ballad Album" they would have had an unqualified success on their hands. Thomas Quasthoff is well-known and highly regarded in the classical field for his innate musicality and beautiful baritone voice. With subtle and understated singing he adapts effortlessly to songs described as popular but which in many cases are as much works of art as classical songs. It's all but impossible to detect that English isn't his first language and he sounds utterly at home here, especially the slower numbers, but is less successful in up-tempo tunes which are merely faster - they just don't swing. And, if it don't swing, it ain't jazz.
And there's the rub. The overblown liner notes do this album no service, describing it as "both intoxicatingly beautiful and unbearably intense" whereas it is simply a very beautiful and successful ballad album. They also (ungrammatically) state that "Over-hasty attempts to pigeon-hole this recording is (sic) left to others." Unfortunately it's not. It's down to DGG, who chose to mis-title it.
But forget the packaging and you'll find a very enjoyable, beautifully arranged and recorded album of standards that will delight the ear from start to finish, even if it doesn't set your toes tapping.
Thomas Quasthoff has apparently always loved jazz and included jazz songs in his repertoire. One can only hope that, one day, a more jazz-oriented label than DGG might have put Mr Quasthoff into a New York jazz club at midnight with a quartet of top US jazz musicians and a live audience for a few nights, let the tapes roll and edited the results. Then, I suspect, you would indeed have "The Jazz Album".
Musically I'd say this is worth four stars, but I'm rating it as three because of the label's mis-representation of the contents.
- BUT IS IT JAZZ?Normally I don't have much time for classification of music beyond good/bad or interesting/dull but since DGG have chose to promote this as "The Jazz Album" it beomes an issue.
If only they had called it "The Ballad Album" they would have had an unqualified success on their hands. Thomas Quasthoff is well-known and highly regarded in the classical field for his innate musicality and beautiful baritone voice. With subtle and understated singing he adapts effortlessly to songs described as popular but which in many cases are as much works of art as classical songs. It's all but impossible to detect that English isn't his first language and he sounds utterly at home here, especially the slower numbers, but is less successful in up-tempo tunes which are merely faster - they just don't swing. And, if it don't swing, it ain't jazz.
And there's the rub. The overblown liner notes do this album no service, describing it as "both intoxicatingly beautiful and unbearably intense" whereas it is simply a very beautiful and successful ballad album. They also (ungrammatically) state that "Over-hasty attempts to pigeon-hole this recording is (sic) left to others." Unfortunately it's not. It's down to DGG, who chose to mis-title it.
But forget the packaging and you'll find a very enjoyable, beautifully arranged and recorded album of standards that will delight the ear from start to finish, even if it doesn't set your toes tapping.
Thomas Quasthoff has apparently always loved jazz and included jazz songs in his repertoire. One can only hope that, one day, a more jazz-oriented label than DGG might have put Mr Quasthoff into a New York jazz club at midnight with a quartet of top US jazz musicians and a live audience for a few nights, let the tapes roll and edited the results. Then, I suspect, you would indeed have "The Jazz Album".
Musically I'd say this is worth four stars, but I'm rating it as three because of the label's mis-representation of the contents.