Jeanne Golan

Jeanne Golan – It Takes One to Tango (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:40 minutes | 1,06 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Steinway and Sons

Pianist Jeanne Golan has specialized in the music of composers who perished in the Holocaust, and there are some of those here, by Erwin Schulhoff. The “Works of Contemporary and Recovered Voices” subtitle suggests a dual theme, and it might seem that the Holocaust-related works are an uneasy fit with the contemporary takes on the tango that make up the rest of the program. Actually, though, the two sides of Golan’s album go together persuasively, for the tango certainly fell under the Nazi category of Entartete Musik, and the tango art form has not lost any of its edge. Golan has unearthed some gems here. There’s a delightful Reverie d’automne, Op. 6, of Wanda Landowska (persecuted by the Nazis, but successful in escaping), and a heavily jazz-inflected Tanzsuite, Op. 20, of Wilhelm Grosz, who also fled and succeeded, as Hugh Williams, as an American popular composer. The Schulhoff Five Etudes de Jazz are remarkable in the degree to which they stretch popular materials in truly avant-garde directions, and they form a bridge with the contemporary works by Pablo Ortiz, Eric Moe, Chester Biscardi (the title of whose Incitation to Desire is taken from disapproving language about the tango in the 1944 Grove Dictionary of Music), Theodore Wiprud, and Toby Twining. The latter’s An American in Buenos Aires is delightfully arranged into a toy piano and conventional piano duet. Golan expertly teases out the varying levels of tango presence in these works, and her performance is as skillfully thought out as her program. An intriguing and fresh find for those interested in the popular impact on concert music, with fine sound from New York state’s Oktaven Studio.
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