Dave Brubeck
a.k.a.
David Warren Brubeck
TIME OUT FOR CLASSICS Dave Brubeck's Favorite Things
A legend of modern jazz, Dave Brubeck is also a classical composer. Telarc has recently released his live concert from London's Royal Festival Hall and the Paretore Brothers piano duo will be recording his music for Koch. Brubeck chatted about his favorite recordings with Benjamin Ivry, barnesandnoble.com's Associate Editor for classical music.
barnesandnoble.com: How did you get involved in music?
Dave Brubeck: My mother Elizabeth Ivey Brubeck was a pianist who studied with Dame Myra Hess and Tobias Matthey. As a child in California I used to listen to her play Chopin. The first choral music I remember hearing was Handel's "Messiah" when the Mormon Tabernacle Choir broadcast it over the radio. They still do it great!
bn: When did you become interested in modern music?
DB: When I was 20, Shostakovich was my favorite composer. I still find his Fifth Symphony wonderful, with its outstanding themes and rhythms. That's the piece that made me want to be a classical composer. Another Shostakovich work I love is the set of Preludes and Fugues, especially as as played by pianist Tatiana Nikolayeva, who used to go to the composer's house every day as he was writing it. Listening to her play, I imagined her as a fiery young woman until I realized that to have known him when she did, she must have been older than that.
After the Second World War, I returned to California to study composition with Darius Milhaud, who wrote wonderful works like "Le Boeuf sur le Toit" and "La Crétion du monde." I especially enjoy his work for two pianos, "Scaramouche." When I was studying with Milhaud in San Francisco, there was a piano team of two girls who moved downstairs from me, and they would practice this work. Eventually they played my own pieces for two pianos. My favorite Milhaud choral work is "Pacem in Terris," which his friend Maurice Abravanel conducted beautifully. Milhaud's abilities were amazing; his 15th and 16th string quartets can be played as individual pieces or together as an octet. He wrote them separately in two books and just remembered what was in each quartet. I don't think any other composer could have done that, maybe not even Mozart.
bn: Milhaud's wife, Madeleine, is a legend in her own right.
DB: Madeleine Milhaud made a remarkable record narrating Stravinsky's "Histoire du soldat." She was not only an actress but also a very good pianist who could read anything put in front of her. Milhaud used to write in ink like a demon and never proofread; I can't compose a bar without erasing something. I think of him almost every day, even now when I'm almost 80. He kept me involved in jazz. "Bubu" -- that's what he'd call me -- "Bubu, don't give up something you do so well. In jazz you can travel everywhere and you'll never have to attend a faculty meeting!"
bn: Milhaud blended jazz and classical music, too.
DB: Yes, and another time jazz and classical music mixed was when Leonard Bernstein recorded my brother Howard's "Dialogues for Jazz Combo and Orchestra." Bernstein was a total genius with a lightning understanding of the jazz idiom. He picked up things so quickly and he seemed to have total recall.
bn: Do you have a favorite among your own recordings?
DB: If I had to single out one of my own records, it would be "Time Out," which still outsells most new jazz albums released today. It was a breakthrough, with different time signatures you couldn't dance to, and it was all-original material instead of the versions of Broadway show tunes the record companies wanted. I thought it would sell maybe five copies, but its success should give encouragement to younger musicians: if you follow your own convictions and do your best, things can work out all right.
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