Brubeck: Nocturnes

John Salmon

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Cat No: 8559301

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Release Date: 30 June 2006

Label: Naxos / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 636943930120

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: BRUBECK

Description
Dave Brubeck (b. 1920) Nocturnes Notes from the Composer I am delighted that John Salmon has chosen to perform these short piano pieces. Many of them have a special significance to me, as I almost always write from personal experience. For example, when I first saw Lake Tahoe as a child, the pristine blue waters surrounded by pine forest seemed like Shangri-la. When I was twenty years old, I spent one wonderful summer at Tahoe with my jazz band playing our very first engagement. When I was married, I had one day on Army leave for a honeymoon, and Lake Tahoe was the place we chose. Blue Lake Tahoe is filled with youthful memories. Growing up on a ranch in Northern California, I often heard the call of the meadowlark as I walked through the grassy fields. The melody of Strange Meadowlark is based on the actual notes of that call. It is one of my favourite songs, with beautiful lyrics by my wife, Iola. Sometimes my pieces are like postcards. Looking at a Rainbow was written after a rainstorm in Tokyo on my first trip to Japan, when I watched a rainbow arch across the city. I was so impressed with the delicate sounds I heard emanating from a koto concert in a fine Japanese restaurant that I wrote Koto Song, based on the scale of that Japanese stringed instrument. Koto Song is slightly tinged with the blues. Perhaps I was getting a bit homesick at this point. In earlier years I performed in Mexico frequently and always enjoyed excursions to many parts of that fascinating country. The title Nostalgia de Mexico is self-explanatory. Recalling the people and the scenery of Mexico, I composed Recuerdo especially for a Mexican tour and played it for the first time to an audience in Belles Artes, Mexico City. After the concert, I realised I had captured something of Mexico when I heard people singing the refrain "recuerdo" as they walked down the street. In some of the pieces, if you were to look at the notation, you would notice a visual pun, if that is the right term. For instance, on the printed music of I See, Satie you would see the notes forming a pear shape in the last three measures. This is in reference to a musical precedent. When the music of the great French composer Erik Satie was criticized for its lack of form, his response was to write a piece that was visually formed in the shape of a pear. In the music for Looking at a Rainbow the ties over notes form an arch. In A Misty Morning, picturing the earth shrouded in fog, the melody is hidden in the middle notes for the first twelve bars, instead of the usual placement in the top line. Other pieces reflect domestic life. There was a period when Iola had gone to California to attend to her mother, who was ill. That is when I wrote Home Without Iola. And when I was writing Lost Waltz, I went around singing to myself, 'I'm so lost. I'm so lost without you'. Undoubtedly those two pieces evoke the same emotions. When I was first dating my wife, I gave her the nickname 'Oli'. After six dec
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