HK Gruber: Short Stories from Vienna Woods Album Review – Still Strange After All These Years | classical music

AIn ’83, Austrian rebel HK Gruber showed no sign of losing his anarchic edge nor his ability to entertain. This eclectic album includes the important Piano Concerto, which Emanuel Ax premiered with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 2017, and an absurd potpourri extracted from the 2014 opera Tales from the Vienna Woods, both conducted by the composer himself.

In essence, the 25-minute concerto begins anxiously, plunging into a turbulent landscape full of fragmented Schoenbergian melodies before emerging into blues-filled daylight. This is music with ants in its pants, elegantly executed by Frank Dupree, whose jazz experience stands him in good stead here.

Based on Udon von Horvath’s satire on the moral decadence of the bourgeoisie in interwar Vienna, Gruber’s opera proved fertile ground for an extended symphonic suite. A brutal introduction to the Berg Channels, before a muted trumpet sings the plaintive song from the Wachau. Elsewhere, we encounter sparse, sparse waltzes, dancing foxes and even a Johann Strauss beer explosion. The catchy orchestrations are full of invention, and the whole thing is capped off with the brutal Polka Infernale.

The Gallic-colored Luftschlösser (Castles in the Air), a quirky cycle for solo piano, is an attractive meter.

Stream it on Apple Music (above) or on Spotify