Something Good
Can a musical instrument be infused with the spirit of the person who played it for decades? You may find yourself pondering that question as you enjoy On Richard Rodgers’ Piano, a new CD that features the contemporary songwriter John Bucchino playing Rodgers melodies on a Steinway that the legendary composer purchased in 1939 and on which he wrote much, if not most, of his greatest music.
The instrument is currently owned by Adam Guettel, Rodgers’s grandson and an important musical theater composer in his own right. Bucchino had the brilliant idea of using it to make a recording of indelible tunes that R.R. crafted for songs that he wrote in collaboration with Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II, the master lyricists who were his long-term partners at two different stages of his career. The resulting CD is much more than a curiosity; in fact, it’s one of the best recordings to cross my desk in months. To quote Guettel, “Here is great beauty and humor and understanding, as if Rodgers and Bucchino are friends who never met, united by a lovely old piano.”
The disc is pleasantly surprising in at least two respects. First, it’s something of a revelation to me that Rodgers’ melodies stand up so well in performances that have an ad-lib, free-form quality to them; R.R. was a stickler for his songs being sung exactly as written in his shows, but I suspect that he’d be pleased with the highly creative way in which they’ve been reconceived here for presentation as stand-alone instrumental pieces. The other revelation is the excellence of Bucchino’s playing. I’ve heard him accompany himself and other singers on several occasions but his work at the keyboard never seemed as skilled, sensitive, and soulful as it does here. This is all the more impressive since, as Bucchino admits in the CD booklet’s notes, he plays “purely by ear and by instinct.” For that reason, he informs us, “none of these arrangements was written down or even (with the exception of the basic structure of ‘My Favorite Things’) pre-meditated.” Wow!
A great first impression is made by track #1 of the disc, an exquisite rhapsody on the melodies of “Do-Re-Mi” (“Let’s start at the very beginning” — get it?) and “The Surrey With the Fringe on Top.” Up next is that “pre-meditated” version of “My Favorite Things,” which starts out as a jazz waltz and goes on from there, full of ear-catching moments. It’s hard to pick favorites among the ensuing tracks; in songs ranging from “Isn’t it Romantic?” to “It Might as Well Be Spring” to “You Took Advantage of Me,” Bucchino deftly manages to interpret these standards without distorting the melodic or harmonic structure of the music as written. Also persuasively covered are “My Romance,” “The Lady is a Tramp,” “Where or When,” “If I Loved You,” and “My Funny Valentine.”
One or two cuts are worthy of special note. Bucchino plays “Edelweiss” from The Sound of Music with such wistful, ethereal beauty that your eyes may well with tears as you listen. (Mine certainly did.) And then there’s “Something Good,” a love ballad that was written expressly for the film version of The Sound of Music after the death of Hammerstein. Shorn of Rodgers’s own problematic lyrics (“Perhaps I had a wicked childhood, perhaps I had a miserable youth,” etc.), the song is revealed to have one of his loveliest melodies.
Composers are not always the finest interpreters of other people’s music; for proof, just listen to Leonard Bernstein conduct Carmen or La Bohème. In contrast to those willful, idiosyncratic performances, On Richard Rodgers’ Piano succeeds because John Bucchino brings his own artistry to these immortal songs while showing due respect for them and for the genius who wrote them.
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[On Richard Rodgers’ Piano may be ordered through the website www.johnbucchino.com or by phoning 800-448-6369 from 9am to 6pm, Pacific time.]
