Album Reviews

Leonard Bernstein was probably the first classical musician to boldly champion rock music when he enthusiastically endorsed The Beatles back in 1964-well before the group's true artistry flowered. Bernstein wrote a short, joyous, almost inappropriately flowery introduction to Geoffrey Stokes's 1980 book “The Beatles,” which you can read at http://www.frederickchorale.org/Beatles_2.asp.

Bernstein even used The Beatles in his “Young Person's Concert” series, which was dedicated to exposing children to classical music. Of course, that was then. Today you don't see or hear classical music on television, and the idea that one of the major networks would take a breather from crime shows and erectile dysfunction advertising long enough to broadcast a show about classical music for kids at any hour of any day of the week is preposterous-not that there seems to be any classical musician taking the time to reach out to kids as Bernstein did. And with music appreciation programs being gutted from school budgets as non-essential “luxuries,” the future for classical music looks bleak indeed. Go to a classical music concert as I do monthly at Avery Fisher Hall, and the audience is mostly old people. When they die off, who's going to replace them? Wait! I know! More old people! See, I'm not as worried about the elderly demographics as some others. It's like a toy retailer looking at his demographics and wondering who'd going to be buying when the kids grow up: more kids-especially when the not so much funda-mentalists outlaw abortion and do away with birth control.

Classical pianist Christopher O'Riley's Radiohead enthusiasm goes beyond endorsements. With this, his second set of Radiohead transcriptions, O'Riley attempts to bring classically trained virtuosic playing and its extravagant musical sensibilities to the rock audience, but without turning the tunes on their heads.

Do not imagine some sappy “classical music” rendering of the band's often disturbing, dissonant music! This is not The Baroque Beatles or any such drivel. Rather than interpreting the band's better known works, O' Riley demonstrates his fandom by covering a few of the band's more obscure works found on “B” sides, including “How I Made My Millions,” which I've never heard. But don't expect to be able to follow along even if you have heard it. You try deriving O'Riley's rendering of “Like Spinning Plates,” from the backward tape loops comprising the originals.

Actually, since I have the double 10” LP edition of Amnesiac I was easily able to play the original version backwards (frontwards) and at the right speed (faster) to hear the original track as played. As O'Riley points out in his liner notes, Yorke appears to have transcribed the backwards phonetics of his lyrics and sung them that way in real time, so when reversed, the words would make sense as English. Some friends and I messed around with that technique back in the early '70's while on acid.

O'Riley's take on “Paranoid Android” from OK Computer is a standout of a wild chase scene up and down the keyboard that highlights both his interpretive and technical skills.

Engineer Da-Hong Seetoo's richly drawn, ambient recording of the Hamburg Steinway Model D adds to the listening pleasure. Seetoo was last seen by me modifying Jadis tube amps up at then Jadis importer Fanfare International's offices some years ago, so it's no coincidence that the recording is warm, yet detailed, and takes in plenty of the atmosphere of the church in which it was recorded (St. Mark's, Palo Alto, CA). Seetoo gets a wonderful balance of direct piano and reflected sound, to set up a spacious, well-focused and dramatically dynamic rendering of both the piano and the venue.

I can't imagine a better classical music good will ambassador than translations of the familiar (or semi-familiar) to a higher level of artistry-though O'Riley would probably be offended by my suggestion of such a hierarchy.

On this second Radiohead outing, O'Riley's interpretive skills are even more expressively drawn than on the first one (True Love Waits and therefore this disc is highly recommended for both Radiohead fans and non-fans alike.