Making music is all about freedom; indeed, for many, it is one of free will's most basic expressions. But freedom in classical music can prove harder to win for its performers than for its listeners and composers, tied as they are to a concept of the musical work as a sacrosanct, printed, text, an idea that took its definitive shape during the 19th century.
Thus, the more palpable freedoms evident in supposedly less serious spheres of musical life are notably lacking. The practice of improvisation is effectively dead in classical music. Both Beethoven and Liszt, in their respective days, were as famous for their improvisations as for the performances of their own and others' works; but now, while many classical musicians can and do improvise, this ability rarely shows itself in the concert hall.
So it was that, in receiving Thinking Allowed, a new recording from the David Rees-Williams Trio - a group that made its name plying improvised jazz renditions of works in the classical repertory - I wondered how to detach myself from my concert hall suspicions about people playing around with combinations of notes that already have perfectly adequate homes, to say the least.
Rees-Williams and his band are, of course, following a trail well blazed in the 50s and 60s by the Jacques Loussier Trio, whose first Play Bach album remains one of greatest jazz albums of the 20th century, and also one of my favourite Bach records. The Rees-Williams Trio, while it lacks something of the zip and, well, arrogance of Loussier's full-swing Bach, pursues a less aggressive, more explorative engagement with its original and considerably wider repertoire.
When successful, the experience is a quite magical one. Luckily, now on their fourth album, the Rees-Williams Trio have just got better and better. Familiar melodies from Bach to Franck to the traditional hymn to St Patrick surface in unfamiliar, often counterintuitive textures (the new album features a Hammond organ, whose shimmering first entry on the back of a resonating electric bass note is quite the equal of the high hat's first tentative entry in Loussier's Prelude in C). The tracks manage to retain their consistency as jazz numbers while, at the same time, allowing the older music to be glimpsed through it in much the same way as when, passing an open window, you catch the strains of some beloved film or music enjoying existence in the wider world. The result is a highly personal but nonetheless powerful invasion of the classical repertoire's perhaps over-protected space.
