The Nutcracker Suite – DUKE ELLINGTON****

Overture/Toot Toot Tootie Toot/Peanut Butter Brigade/Sugar Rum Cherry/Entr’acte/The Volga Vouty/Chinoiscric/ Dance Of The Floreadores/Arabesque Cookies

Jazz maestro Duke Ellington reinterprets Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite with a jazz orchestration, re-titling the songs in the process. Billy Strayhorn assisted with the arrangements. (UK:11)

“Ellington's genius is best appreciated in his orchestral compositions, his balancing of the composer's intentions with his band members' inventions, and his ability to write for the performer of the instrument, not merely the instrument itself.”

“Take one brief movement of The Nutcracker Suite, the Entr'act. Listen to it several times, and then just simply marvel. We hear the composer's orchestral textures, we hear the colourful voices of no less than four different soloists, we hear nuanced dynamics, and finally we experience a collaborative celebration as much a product of the individual parts as their sum meaning.”

“This Nutcracker is no novelty project, no mere 'jazzing up' of the classics. Ellington comes at the piece as another jazz artist might approach a Gershwin or Cole Porter standard. The result is a 're-visioning' that exposes Ellington's inimitable genius without dismissing Tchaikovsky’s.”

“His Nutcracker Suite is not just some 'jazz in the classics' campy fun: a theme, some swinging solos, return to theme and out. No, nothing of the kind. Ellington and Strayhorn carefully imagined these sophisticated arrangements, that remain quite faithful to Tchaikovsky's music. They bring out the most evocative, new colours and rhythms in the music so you feel you're hearing the originals in a whole new light.”

“What Ellington does with Tchaikovsky is truly a work of genius. An understated effort; this album is so fluidly listenable, that it requires repeated listening to fully appreciate the subtleties of these very sophisticated arrangements. But as complex as the Duke's harmonic approach is, the real star of this show is the beauty of the music itself. Anyone with an appreciation for the music of Ellington cannot go wrong with this swinging, jazzy, gorgeous album.”

“Duke's attitude to the Nutcracker Suite is rather tongue-in-cheek, as witness his re-titlings, but it's an interesting approach nevertheless.”