Romanian Folk Dances, Sz 56 (Bartok - Arr. C. König)
Vocalise (Rachmaninov - Arr. C. König)
Adagietto (Mahler - Arr. C. König)
Scherzo from A Midsummer Night's Dream, Op. 61 (Mendelssohn - Arr. C. König)
2 Mélodies hébraïques (Ravel - Arr. P. Schweren / A. Maiburg)
Syrinx Reloaded (Debussy - Arr. P. Schweren)
Frédéric's Dance (Chopin - Arr. P. Schweren)
Hov Arek (Traditional Armenian - Arr. P. Schweren)

Never in a million years or within my weirdest dreams would I ever have imagined that the famous Adagietto from Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 5 could be subjected to a jazz treatment and come out unscathed. But as jazz violinist and arranger Christoph König points out in the booklet notes: "It was the biggest challenge of the project. I wanted to stay as close as possible to the original. Instead of intervening forcibly and bending the music out of shape, I chose to change my own approach. As soon as you entertain the notion of interpreting the Adagietto as a jazz ballad, the music suddenly speaks a new language and you discover blues notes and harmonies that are very close to jazz". I believe what he means by this is that jazz is full of "blue" notes. In other words, notes that sit outside the harmonic scale in use, and therefore suspend harmonic resolution. And Gustav Mahler's music is loaded with suspended resolutions, which is one of the ingredients that make his music so appealing. For example, the objective of the ascending opening notes of the main melody of the Adagietto is to get from C to F (c-d-e-f), but what Mahler did often and extremely well was to delay the harmonic resolution by doing this (c-d-e-e--f) which by withholding it endows the F with a more gratifying harmonic closure. So not only is a jazz treatment of Mahler's music possible, it's actually a surprisingly pleasant revelation to witness.

And of course what also helps to elevate this recording an extra notch is the attentive care and details the members of the Maiburg Ensemble bring to the music. Anette Maiburg (flute), Pascal Schweren (piano), Matthias Hacker (double bass) and Fethi Ak (percussion) all lend the pieces a jazzy groove whilst maintaining a respectful ear to their classical roots. Maiburg's playing, who is also the project director, is always musical and well adaptive to each piece's style and character. You can hear the versatility of her musicianship in this fine recording of a Flute Concerto by Joaquín Clerch. From Mahler to Ravel, Debussy to Chopin which you can hear below, these musicians well capture and project the music's spirit, and jazz everything up just right.

So if you enjoy listening to both classical and jazz and sometimes face the dilemma of not being able to decide which to listen to, why not combine the two. This recording fits that role quite nicely. Heck, the Mahler might even pull jazz enthusiasts over to the other side.