Search - BBC Symphony Orchestra, Budapest Jazz Orchestra, Gergely Vajda :: Péter Eötvös: Snatches of a Conversation / Jet Stream* / Paris-Dakar

Eotvos' fresh "message in a bottle" to jazz lovers

Christopher Culver | 11/04/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"SNATCHES collects five pieces from Peter Eotvos which are all influenced in some way by the concepts of jazz. Eotvos was fascinated by the freshness of jazz heard while growing up in Hungary, a novel style made even stranger through the static and distortion of communist jamming efforts. These five pieces are, he says, a "message in a bottle to jazz-lovers."



The opening "Snatches of a Conversation" (2001), for double-bell trumpet solo, speak, and ensemble, is the only truly avant-garde piece on the disc. It gives the audience the sense of overhearing bits of a rather odd conversation in a jazz cafe, and the trumpet represents the waiter weaving among tables. The spoken word is provided by Omar Ebrahim, who may be known to some from his baritone performance in Gyorgy Ligeti's "Aventures/Nouvelles Aventures". It should be mentioned that is piece is only jazz-inspired, for no improvisation is permitted. This isn't a piece I return to often, but when I do, I quite enjoy it. The performed here by Marco Blaauw on double-bell trumpet and musikFabrik | Ensemble fuer Neue Musik is so smooth and effortless that one has a lot of fun listening.



"Jet Stream" (2002) is the big draw here. For trumpet and orchestra, it is a conceptually fascinating piece based on myriad stripes of colour with the trumpet going against the orchestra much like a single individual walking in the opposite direction against a crowd on a busy sidewalk. There are two trumpet cadenzas, of which the first is a free improvisation. This recording was made a month after its premier and features the same performers as in the first concert, Markus Stockhausen on trumpet with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. This is one of Eotvos' biggest pieces, and it's worth listening to.



"Paris-Dakar" (2000) is written for trombone solo and big band, and is Eotvos' contribution to the fascination with big band music which is strangely common in Hungary. Gergely Vajda conducts the Budapest Jazz Orchestra, and trombone solo is performed by Laszlo Goz. The trombone player is free to impromise all the way, and the effect of the entire piece is something like a long-distance car race where the soloist must keep ahead of the pack.



The disc ends with two (piano and electric guitar) jazz improvisations on themes from Eotvos' opera "Le Balcon", which premiered in 2002 at the Aix-en-Provence Festival but of which a recording is sadly still not yet available. Having not heard the original themes, I can not fully appreciate these improvisations, though they do sound quite nice, and Bela Szakcsi's piano skills are admirable.



As always, Budapest Music Center Records packages everything with a fine graphic design, though I feel its digipacks are a little too fragile. The liner notes contain comments by Eotvos about his pieces and histories of the ensembles (though, unfortunately not of the soloists) in English, French, and Hungarian.



This disc may be a fine introduction to Eotvos' work for people with a special appreciation for jazz music. However, I think an even better one would be the disc on BMC with his magisterial "Atlantis.""