2000 -- The Year in Music
I love writing for the Web! For the last month I've
been reading other critics' retrospectives for the last year. Given the lead times for the
print media, they probably had to write them in the last throes of summer's heat, praying
that no one would release a significant piece of work without having informed them in
advance. Thanks to the speed with which information can be posted on the Internet (not too
mention my habitual procrastination in meeting deadlines), I can do it when the
ball begins to drop and still have it up before midnight. Ain't progress wonderful?
 Best Classical
Recording for 2000 -- Beethoven: 32 Piano Sonatas
(Robert Silverman, piano. Orpheum Masters KSP 830. Jim Turner, prod.; John Atkinson, eng.
DDD. TT: 11:16:00)
This is a recording for the ages! Silverman plays Beethoven
with the passion and conviction that only a lifetime's intense study can produce -- and
only then if one started out as a virtuoso. These are intensely personal readings, but
they aren't private conversations between the composer and the pianist; Silverman ushers
the listener into the music and accompanies him on a grand exploration of it.
And then there's John Atkinson's wonderful recording, which
is a marvel (see interview). You probably won't see many other reviews of this one
-- professional jealousy being what it is. Atkinson's peers beg him for copies of his
recordings, but steadfastly refuse to give him his due as an engineer, thereby depriving
their readers of a growing body of spectacular work.
If you love Beethoven and already have a (even several)
recording(s) of the sonatas, you need this one, too. Silverman's deep performances are
intensely moving. If you don't know the sonatas, here's the place to get acquainted
-- the sonatas are beautiful, intense, dramatic and harrowing, but above all, an
exploration of what it is to be human. As such, they speak to everyone, especially when
performed with the insight and sheer skill of a performer like Silverman. An added bonus
is Silverman's essay "What to Listen For in a Beethoven Symphony," which
distills a lifetime of Beethoven scholarship into a gracefully written several thousand
words.
Runner Up -- Shostakovich: Complete
String Quartets
(Emerson String Quartet: Eugene Drucker, Philip Setzer, violin; Larry Dutton, viola; David
Frankel, cello. DG 447-076-2. Emerson Qt., prods.; Da Hon Seeto, eng. DDD. TT: 6:33:05)
A lovely recording of spirited performances, captured live
at the Aspen Music Festival. Currently my favorite interpretations of these epochal
quartets.
 Best Jazz
Recording of 2000 -- Carla Bley: 4X4
(Lew Soloff, trumpet; Wolfgang Pushnig, alto saxophone; Andy Sheppard, tenor saxophone;
Gary Valente, trombone; Carla Bley, piano; Larry Goldings, organ; Steve Swallow, bass;
Victor Lewis, drums. ECM/WATT 30. Jon Marius Aareskjold, Tom Mark engs.; Steve Swallow and
Carla Bley, prod. DDD. TT: 53:39)
By Carla Bley's standards, an octet is a small
ensemble, but this one produces a huge sound. Actually, what's most amazing about 4X4
is how much space all the musicians have to work in. The material here ranges from the
rowdy good-times of "Blues in 12 Bars/Blues in 12 Other Bars" to the hushed
magnificence of the hymn-like "Utviklingssang" or Bley's gentle homage to
Matisse, "Les Trois Lagons." Her fabled quirkiness and daffy good humor are on
display in "Baseball," which has organist Larry Goldings recreating all the
hoaky baseball-park organ flourishes, thrown in willy-willy over a rollicking groove. The
album's centerpiece is the rocking "Sidewinders in Paradise" in which Bley
employs Lou Donaldson's jazz-funk classic as found material. The result is a sassy,
hip-waggling stroll through a tropical paradise, complete with birdcalls.
Just about every article written on Bley focuses on her
"quirky" good humor, and it's true that all of her work exhibits this quality to
some extent -- but so did Duke Ellington's. What I find compelling about her music is its
somber beauty -- I'm reminded of Baudelaire's proclamation that "in everything
beautiful is something strange." Bley takes that strangeness and polishes it and
examines it from every angle, and what is left is beautiful.
 Best Rock
Album of 2000 (a tie)
Dave Alvin: Public Domain -- Songs From the Wild
Land
(Hightone HCD 8122. Dave Alvin, prod.; Mark Linnett, eng.; Joe Gastwirt,
mastering eng. DDD. TT: 61:10.)
Alvin's loving romp through the music of the "wild
America" is beautifully recorded and joyfully rowdy. If you've been wondering what
happened to good ol' rock'n'roll, this is one answer: It discovered its roots.
But Alvin isn’t handing us a musicology project here,
he’s having a ball. From start to finish, Public Domain is a joyful romp
through America’s musical attic and it's pure rock'n'roll. And the sound is
ravishing. If you have any interest in great music making, you owe it to yourself to get
this record and listen to it often. It’s good for what ails ya.
Emmylou Harris: Red Dirt Girl
(Nonesuch 79616-2. Malcolm Burn, prod., eng. AAD. 55:58)
 Ms. Harris' Nonesuch debut
was almost entirely composed of songs she herself had written -- an unusual move for a
singer best known as an interpreter of other people's material. It turns out she's been
holding out on us -- she's a brilliant songwriter with an eye for the telling detail.
Pain and loss are the album's themes and Harris has no peer
at evoking these emotions through her singing. The shock is how well she can write about
them -- and how personally. One of the record's most moving songs, "Bang the Drum
Slowly," is addressed to her recently deceased father. "I meant to bring you
water from the well / And be beside you when you fell / Could you tell?" But she
knows she's just talking to herself: "Bang the drum slowly, play the fife lowly / To
dust be returning, from dust we begin."
And the album's closer, "Boy From Tupelo" has her
mourning the lost possibilities of all of rock's loser-kings who squandered their wasted
promise, from Elvis to her own fallen angel, Gram Parsons. Thirty years on and still she
grieves, ". . . it's a shame and it's a sin / Everything I coulda been to you /
… I'll never understand why or how / oh, but baby it's too late now."
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
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