A review of most of Claus Ogerman's stuff with the unprecedented Chorlieder, from 1985

I was looking through the voluminous discography of Claus Ogerman again as I often do when I noticed there was an interesting classical composition called Chorlieder which was unavailable, so I bought it on the assumption it might be more approachable.  It wasn't, but that's OK, it's always worth the search.  It's actually purely a cappella music with no orchestra, no musical instruments but the human voice.  So that's annoying (as any married person well knows).  I've mentioned him before in the context of the similar Colombier recently, but really there's no arranger quite like this man, he's incomparable.  His gift is to create really original arrangements out of sometimes really ordinary jazz standards or well-known classical pieces.  I also brought him up when I talked about the 'jazz with strings' stuff, with his collaboration with Freddie Hubbard, his composition called This Dream. Links for all those might be down, I will reup if anyone asks, no problem.

In the beginning, back in my college days, I was familiar with the Bill Evans album with symphony orchestra where he brings his talents to rearrange some old classical melodies like Faure's Prelude, but on that work there are also some really surprisingly progressive compositions, for ex. his Elegie:




On the other hand, in 1974's Symbiosis, Evans plays piano in a wonderful concerto-style composition with 5 movements.  I loved that so much I played parts of it at my wedding, in the church.  No one liked it.  Except me, and maybe the bats in the roof.  But it's amazing.  So yes, me and Claus go back a long ways, and we're real tight.  The work gets resurrected for the later albums, the Concerto I included too, and the Lyrical Works CD that came out much later.

Collaborations with Barbara Streisand (yeah, her!!) and Akkerman are equally shocking for those who like me grew up with classical music and so expect nothing but drivel and the same boring chords from that style of music.  I'm going to draw your attention to the incredibly meditative, delicate, and tender way she sings a song from the famous Orff Carmina Burana:





Which is so hard to imagine for her.

But it's in the 1976 work Gate of Dreams, which I think was presented first as music for ballet, that he really made his masterpiece.  It absolutely blew me away when I first heard it as a university student, and it still blows me away.  It's one of those albums everyone should really know, but doesn't.  Again he recycled components from it in later albums like Lyrical Works.  Time passed Autumn part 3:




In my life I don't expect to hear any more compositions as beautiful as that one, ever.

The two albums he made with Michael Brecker were also really good, sentimental, warm, progressive, but solid throughout.  Then more recently I decided to listen to the Lyrical Works CD and I was shocked to find the song called "I loved You" which is a poem by a Russian writer--I forget who-- he set to music.  In fact that song was probably written for Streisand in the classical album she made.  But the way it's sung with the orchestral backing absolutely sends me to heaven:





Here the genius of the song is the simplicity of the melody coupled with the deep yearning and aching pain of the lyrics (I hope you find someone who loves you as much as I loved you) sung over an ever-shifting series of chords mostly diatonic that become difficult to hang on, being so oddly original, sounding a bit like she's standing on waves.  The Streisand version is just singing on top of piano, presumably played by Ogerman and is useful as it allows you to delineate the chords more clearly.  One of the best songs I've heard in the last decade, hands down.  Tragically unknown.

So there you go.  One of my favourite composers of all time, just wanted to complete some of his discography with the Chorlieder.  I should add there is a lot of dreck in his output too, commercial stuff he put out with ordinary easy listening or jazz.  I had to wade through a lot of that to get to these gems.
Also the collaboration with Oscar Peterson was fantastic, as I recall.