Search - Richard [Classical] Wagner, Uri Caine Ensemble :: Wagner e Venezia

At a certain point in the course of these seven Wagner overtures and pieces it becomes clear that pianist Uri Caine's sextet has the good heart of a local community orchestra tackling demanding music. That's just the result of the frontally loaded sound, with an audio brightness that's missing from altogether too many recordings and is here accomplished in a stunning live digital recording. Caine has stripped Wagner's portly scores down to a nimble string quartet, augmented by Caine himself on piano and Dominic Cortese on accordion. The strings, especially Mark Feldman's first violin, move to the ensemble's foreground only occasionally, playing instead a more integrated group-oriented music that lays the keel solidly in Erik Friedlander's cello and Drew Gress's bass. Given that at least most of the ensemble has strong roots in the downtown New York jazz community, it would stand to reason that they'd scramble the Wagnerian code pretty mightily (much as Caine did on his no-holds-barred Mahler set). Instead, they take Wagner almost at his word, squeezing the weepiest strains out of the Lohengrin overture but almost totally upending the Ride of the Valkyries so that it plays as a lighthearted little romp. From the exquisite packaging to the entertaining booklet insert to the sparkling sound--crowd noise and all, at the beginning and interstitially--this is an absolutely first-rate Wagner disc. --Andrew Bartlett