Tchaikovsky
The Nutcracker Suite (arr. Jeff Tyzik, Ellington, Strayhorn)
Chineke! Orchestra et al
Decca 485 4870 16:39 mins
There’s much to unpack from this short recording, which is essentially a reworking of a reworking. This is Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s 1960 big band-jazz take on Tchaikovsky’s 1892 ballet suite in a version for full orchestra plus a sax-and-trumpet fronted jazz quartet (there’s notably no piano part, not that there’d have been anywhere useful to put one in this instance), subsequently created by jazz-pops arranger and conductor Jeff Tyzik. The conductor here is Andrew Grams and this is a live performance from 2022.
This is the premiere recording of Tyzik’s arrangement, which seems odd given its listener-friendly nature, not that Ellington’s original ever had a huge presence in the racks anyway. Happily, the music emerges from this history of artistic pass-the-parcel with all its vigour, excitement and knowing capriciousness intact, effectively returning Tchaikovsky’s much-loved melodies to their orchestral origins with added Ellingtonian swing.
The performance isn’t faultless, in that there are a few instances where Grams doesn’t seem to have the best grip on the work’s sectional balance and the timekeeping is occasionally stiffer than it needs to be, which the jazz musicians seem to find slightly constricting. The recorded sound can occasionally fall short on definition and detail, but that’s more than offset by the in-the-moment nature of the performance. Taken all in all, it’s undoubtedly a long overdue pleasure to have a professional recording of this piece, so all credit to the enterprising Chineke! Orchestra for adding it to the catalogue. Roger Thomas