This is the kind of album that really gets me excited, promising as it does the combination of classical music and jazz or fusion created by trained and educated composers in the context of completely forgotten and lost music from somewhere in the seventies (based on the liner notes). Fritz Pauer of course we know well, having featured him before in the past with Live at Berlin Jazz Gallerie and again here more recently with more miscellaneous stuff, from discogs:
Austrian jazz pianist, composer and leader, born October 14, 1943 in Vienna, died July 1, 2012.
Played with Hans Koller 1960-1962, then leading own groups, accompanied visiting American jazz musicians at Berlin clubs 1962-1968. Joined the dance orchestra at Austrian radio in c. 1970, accompanied Art Farmer on four albums 1970-1981. Settled in Switzerland in c. 1986.
This particular record presumably from mid-70s combines three compositions from three different composers, a common but stupid arrangement for these classical records. The first side is given over to a concerto for jazz band by Pauer in three movements, the first a really nice funky 7-minute long exposition of fusion, that gets a little tiresome when it never leaves the same chord progression or gets developed anywhere, but seemingly becomes just a basis for a bunch of jazz solos.
The second movement sounds like a movie soundtrack for example from a Martin Scorcese, mid-70s, but I don't think it's all that successful with the atonal chamber orchestra beginning passing into an almost easy-listening or muzak-like theme song with tons of smashing cymbals and crescendos on the part of the horn section:
The third part is equally divergent, mixing a bit awkwardly the modern classical and easy jazz aspects--like a dinner party for work people wherein rednecks mix with the more sophisticated girls everyone want to be close to.
On side two there is a totally atonal work to begin with, from the Russian composer, followed by Horowitz, whoever he is, in a piano concerto-like piece which is aptly described by the back blurb as Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue redone, but not that much better.
But for the Fritz Pauer concerto for sure this is worth listening to.
