Music News 2/9/23

NEW 

 

Brad Mehldau, YOUR MOTHER SHOULD KNOW: Brad Mehldau Plays the Beatles (Nonesuch, $16.98) – Pianist Brad Mehldau has featured his arrangements and improvisations on pop material for his entire career. He’s played songs by Radiohead, the Beach Boys, Nirvana, Nick Drake, and many Beatles songs. Now he devotes an entire album to songs by Lennon, McCartney and Harrison: from “I Saw Her Standing There,” and “Baby’s in Black” to “She Said, She Said,” “Here, There and Everywhere,” “For No One,” and “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.” Recorded live in Paris, the album ends with the lullaby, “Golden Slumbers;” the encore is David Bowie’s “Life on Mars”—the next generation of sophisticated pop. 

 

Nonesuch sent P&P some limited-edition posters on heavy stock featuring a minimalist visual/typographic treatment of the title on a black background(free to those purchasing Your Mother Should Know). 

The CD and poster will be available by Sunday. 

 

NOTE: NPR’s Fresh Air had an extensive interview (and performance) by Mr. Mehldau this week. 

 

 

La Rêveuse, LE CONCERT DES OISEAUX (Harmonia Mundi, $19.98) - La Rêveuse are a period-instrument ensemble co-founded by Florence Bolton (on viols) and Benjamin Perrot (who plays Baroque guitar and theorbo) ; the group also features recorders, Baroque oboes, and harpsichord. Le Concert des Oiseaux is a fascinating sequence of music (from Couperin and Purcell to Britten and Ravel) inspired by birds. The ensemble then play a new work, Le Carnaval Des Animaux En Péril by Vincent Bouchot—inspired by Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals—with movements devoted to endangered and extinct animals. A very creative program.