Recorded in 1999,
Leszek Mozdzer's jazz update of the piano music of
Frédéric Chopin offers a diverse assortment of styles ranging from highly ornamented and virtuosic takes in the manner of
Art Tatum to more avant-garde explorations of raw piano sonorities, mixed up with deconstructed fragments. This is a bold display of the potential classical music holds for jazz, and the versatility jazz can bring to classical. In the liner notes, however, a defensive note is struck, as if after
Tatum,
Dave Brubeck,
Miles Davis, the
Modern Jazz Quartet, and
Jacques Loussier had firmly established the propinquity of classical and jazz ideas an apology is still necessary for making such arrangements, especially when the works of
Chopin are involved. Yet the results of
Impressions on Chopin should convince even the most conservative listener of the adaptability of
Chopin's piano music to jazz. Certainly, the melodies and rhythms of the mazurkas, etudes, preludes, and nocturnes are all malleable and easy to recast with spicy modern harmonies and brilliant improvisation, and
Mozdzer's fluency in jazz permits him to find the right idioms to match
Chopin's moods. There are many more hits than misses in this album, and
Mozdzer tries out enough stylistic notions to keep the music interesting, even if his plans don't always work. Some may find this album is unfocused, because
Mozdzer investigates so many possibilities, and the changes may be so frequent that some will only be able to take it in small doses. But the level of imagination is quite high here, so whether one hears this CD in one sitting or over several, there is something guaranteed to beguile even the squarest
Chopin aficionado.