{"id":2790,"date":"2024-06-25T17:43:26","date_gmt":"2024-06-25T15:43:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.popularbeethoven.com\/?p=2790"},"modified":"2024-06-25T17:43:26","modified_gmt":"2024-06-25T15:43:26","slug":"beethoven-jazzed-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.popularbeethoven.com\/beethoven-jazzed-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Beethoven jazzed up!"},"content":{"rendered":"

A talented jazz pianist I know, Peter, recently asked this question: Does Beethoven lend itself to being jazzed up? Peter, a lifelong lover of Bach, readily offered up a number of examples of Bach jazzed up, but as for Beethoven, we agreed to do our separate research and get back to each other. We discovered a tremendous display of talent! Our journey of discovery went something like this:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Peter: <\/strong>To get started, it is interesting to hear what Chris Hinze<\/a> has to say on the subject of jazzing up. To my mind he is one of the very best practitioners of the art. What he did back in the ’70s on his flute was quite exceptional. He said: “I wanted to play baroque music without syncopating or mindlessly ‘jazzifying’, but purely by improvising on the thematic and harmonic material with the possibilities that jazz offered to me”.<\/p>\n

Anna: <\/strong>Which Chris Hinze piece would you recommend I start with?<\/p>\n

Peter: <\/strong>Listen to the faithful adherence to the score, but with original instrumentation and overdubbed flutes in the allegro from the 3rd Brandenburg concerto, with an inspired piano solo from Louis Van Dijk (3:10), and then some flights of fancy (3:50) by several interweaving flutes briefly in unison with the piano. Genius.<\/p>\n

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