Friedrich Gulda

The subtitle is Ein musikalisches Selbstporträt in Form eines Lehrgangs, a musical self-portrait in the form of a course. Friedrich Gulda, the Viennese pianist who played Beethoven and Mozart for Decca and had been trying since the 1950s to make the classical world take jazz seriously, sat down at the MPS studio in Villingen on 26 February 1971 and recorded a double album explaining himself.

Most of it is solo piano. Prelude and Fugue, Play Piano Play, The Air from Other Planets (the title of his 1969 MPS record), and a set of variations on the Doors' Light My Fire, which Dusty Groove calls hilarious and which he had recorded earlier in a rock-trio version on As You Like It. Some tracks have Klaus Weiss on drums (the Duo), Fritz Pauer contributes one piece, and there is a Goethe setting, Selige Sehnsucht. The larger pieces, Music for Piano and Band in three parts and The Veiled Old Land, bring in Benny Bailey on trumpet, Sahib Shihab on baritone and alto, Erich Kleinschuster on trombone and Jimmy Woode on bass.

Dusty Groove files it among Gulda's more "out" efforts. It is also the clearest statement of what he thought he was doing in the years between the Vienna Philharmonic and the Cecil Taylor duets. Cover by Heinz Bahr.

Japanese CD edition from Solid's MPS series.