Iiro Rantala & Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie - Playing Gershwin (CD)

Release Date: 01/30/20

A magnificent piece of work by one of the leading contemporary jazz pianists in Europe. Jazz Views (GB)

Pianist Rantala teams up with The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, one of the world's leading chamber orchestras. The album begins with 'Rhapsody in Blue'. This is a performance with a particular freshness about it, not least because Rantala takes the fully through-composed piece and allows himself a few freedoms with it. For example, he inserts an improvisation based on a Cuban montuno into the final cadenza. Equally thrilling are the 16 minutes in which Rantala and The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen conducted by Jonathan Bloxham take us through the story of Gerswin's 'Porgy and Bess'. The fascinating interplay of keyboard and stringed instrument has also shaped Oliver Groenewald's orchestral arrangement in which we hear Gershwin's fabulous tunes, from 'Summertime' to 'It Ain't Necessarily So'. And there's more. Strictly speaking, the album should be called 'Playing Gershwin and Rantala', because there are also five shorter pieces by the Finnish pianist himself. These are tunes in which he references classical musicians or styles. 'What Comes Up, Must Come Down', for example, is a take on Franz Liszt's romantic piano virtuosity, and this orchestral version brings glorious technicolor to it. 'Anyone With A Heart' is Rantala's personal bow to Mozart. 'Hard Score' is like a movie theme, drawing inspiration from Arabic and world music. 'A Concert Tango' is not so reminiscent of Argentinian tango, but rather the more robust classical tango that is incredibly popular in Finland. As it does in the Gershwin works, the complex interplay which Rantala sets up with the orchestra also works very well here. 'I think like a classical musician. I want to play good pieces, good tunes. Not just riffs,' he says. Of course, he always does this in the jazz spirit, in the spirit of musical freedom.