Record of the day: Vienna Art Orchestra, “All That Strauss”

Vienna Art Orchestra, “All That Strauss” (Cd TCB 20052)

Here we are at the last ride on our musical carousel; let’s celebrate it with a fun and musically exceptional album, forged by those pranksters of the Vienna Art Orchestra, one of the most prestigious jazz formations in the world led by a genius called Mathias Rüegg, capable of transforming any song into a kaleidoscope of instrumental inventions that unite virtuosity of writing with irreverent humor.

Every year in Vienna, while the austere Wiener Philarmoniker celebrate New Year’s Eve in the Musikverein hall by playing Strauss’s Waltzes and Mazurkas and invariably concluding the concert with the “Radetzky-March” which makes the bejeweled audience clap their hands, in a Jazz club of the city the Vienna Art Orchestra celebrates an alternative New Year’s Eve, playing the same repertoire in a version rearranged by Rüegg, who reinterprets classics much loved by the public Viennese like “Wein Weib and Gesang”, “Czardas” and the inevitable “Donauwalzer” in an estranged and tasty way, bringing Strauss father and son together with Duke Ellington, Woody Herman and Gil Evans (adding a pinch of the surreal-provocative taste of Frank Zappa).

Composed solely of musicians of stratospheric quality, the Vienna Art Orchestra is not new to operations of this kind, which have involved stylistically distant musicians such as Satie and Gershwin, but in this case the encounter between the classical Viennese tradition and the African-American language achieves results really hot.

Assisted for the occasion by super guests such as Wolfgang Puschnig on sax and Michel Portal on clarinet, the musicians seem to have fun like crazy affectionately tugging on the beard of dear old Strauss (who on the album cover is holding a tenor sax), through arrangements that they put the harmonies into perspective by x-raying them and insert complex counterpoint ramifications with a European-jazz flavor into the innocent melodies of “Process-Polka” and “Lagunen-Walzer”, but however unorthodox the operation seems, the love that Rüegg and his musicians have for this repertoire is evident in every piece. While Strauss unleashes himself to the swing rhythm, the corks pop, the sparkling wine flows freely, the old year disappears and we too happily set off to finish our tour up and down the calendar.

Carlo Boccadoro, composer and conductor, was born in Macerata in 1963. He lives and works in Milan. He collaborates with soloists and orchestras in different parts of the world. He is the author of numerous books on musical topics.

This text is taken from “Lunario della musica: A record for every day of the year” published by Einaudi, courtesy of the author and the publisher.