This is the third in Rosenthal’s planned series of four albums, ‘Trios In 4 Acts’, and is the follow-up to his 2010 album, ‘Impromptu’. As with that release, this features Rosenthal re-imagining themes from classical music and playing them in a jazz manner. It features Noriko Ueda on bass, Quincy Davis and Tim Horner sharing drums duties. while Ken Peplowski (clarinet) and Sara Caswell (violin) guest on a few songs each. Moving classical pieces into a different musical format is certainly not a new idea, and indeed, one of those included here is Mussorgsky’s “The Old Castle” which is part of his ‘Pictures At An Exhibition’ piano suite which was of course recorded in its totality by Emerson, Lake & Palmer more than 50 years ago.
There are pieces by Chopin, Brahms, Beethoven, Rachmanimov, Dvorak, Elgar and more, all of which have been given a delicate new translation. I am sure that like most pianists, Rosenthal initially started learning the piano by playing classical pieces, before he started to build his reputation in jazz (he has released 18 albums as band leader), so this has allowed him to go back to his roots whilst also staying true to the genre he enjoys playing. The piano is always front and centre, and the music feels relaxed and not rushing at all. It is a very pleasant album indeed, although I am not sure if he has moved the themes far enough into jazz for them to truly take on a life of their own, as instead this sounds exactly like what it is, classical pieces being played by a jazz musician. Enjoyable, but to my ears I would have liked this as a double CD with one being the jazz and the other being classical to allow us to better understand exactly what the new style has brought to the table. 7/10
By Kev Rowland
