Revisiting ‘Mahler Revisited’ Proves an Illuminating Task

Jazzing classical music, by now, creates its own kind of classical music. But I suspect that even when big bands of the ‘30s produced novelty numbers by swinging Beethoven, these were looked upon with a benign smile by serious music devotees. Ellington’s version of Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker” Suite was a classic from the moment he first played it at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas in 1960. A year earlier, Jacques Loussier made a name for himself with a best-selling jazz trio recording, “Play Bach,” and the French pianist is still at it with new recordings of his trio versions of the “Goldberg” Variations and Bach piano concertos on classical labels (Telarc and Teldec, respectively).

In fact, it is hardly possible any longer to be irreverent with classical music. (Pop music fans, learning music from recordings, are the ones who tend to think of a band’s original version of a song as sacrosanct.) When, in 1977, a group of downtown New York improvisers, led by the pianist Uri Caine, released a CD, “Urlicht/Primal Light,” this supposedly provocative radicalizing of Mahler’s music with klezmer, gospel and various forms of avant-garde jazz was immediately hailed by the International Mahler Society as the most innovative Mahler recording of the year.

Sunday evening, Caine brought his “Mahler Revisited” project to Los Angeles in conjunction with the Library of Congress exhibit “Sigmund Freud: Conflict and Culture” at the Skirball Cultural Center. His group performed in the lovely rustic, outdoor setting of the Skirball’s Mark Taper Foundation Courtyard, with a stunning sunset for accompaniment.

Still, Mahler jazz is inherently different than Bach, Beethoven or Tchaikovsky jazz. Mahler put the world into his late 19th and early 20th century symphonies, as no one before had. In them, he returned to the folk music, street music and cantorial music with which he had grown up, and he also acknowledged the big-city dance music of Vienna. Caine then not only adds his own voice to Mahler, he also goes back to Mahler’s roots.

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The “Urlicht/Primal Light” CD, enhanced by the exceptional improvisation of a 14-member ensemble, gave the music a new--and, yes, even shocking--relevance, genuinely presenting familiar material in a new light. The connection to Freud is tenuous (Mahler once visited Freud for a session), but Caine does probe Mahler’s mind deeply.

Caine’s reduced group on Sunday, however, retained only the star clarinetist, Don Byron, from the original recording. This ensemble, with trumpet, drums, bass, turntables, vocal and violin--was rougher and less imaginative, and poor mixing of the amplification often kept Caine’s own fanciful piano playing recessed too far in the background. Where the earlier recording seems downright surrealistic as familiar Mahler moments fade in and out of general weirdness, the live performance felt more contrived and formal.

Even so, there were pleasant surprises. To hear the opening of the Fifth Symphony suddenly explode into chaos was the first. Another was the astonishingly effective burst into klezmer for the cafe-music trio section of the third movement from the First Symphony. Gospel violin was a happy addition to the “Urlicht” movement of the Second Symphony. Mahler was a nature composer, and the momentarily orange clouds along with a sudden chill wind were the perfect environment for Caine’s coruscating solo based upon the Adagietto of the Fifth Symphony.

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Byron was the group’s most impressive component. His labyrinthine solos went places Mahler may never have imagined, but they always gave the impression of circling around Mahler’s universe. Trumpeter Ralph Alessi, however, was inexpressive and technically challenged by Mahler’s music, and his conventional, straight-ahead solos could have come from anywhere. Violinist Diane Monroe’s intonation troubled her Mahler, but she was a strong voice on her own.

Mahlerian in a special way, however, was the turntable artist, Toshio Kajiwara. His contribution was barely audible most of the evening, but he provided distant sound effects that proved an eerie update on Mahler’s own penchant for adding faraway cowbells and the like. Jim Black was the energetic drummer, Michael Formanek played a gripping bass solo based upon the opening of the Second Symphony, and baritone Marc Lowenstein added some momentary cantorial emotion to a “Wunderhorn” song.

Caine’s tour de force is in making a chaotic Mahler circus out of the drinking song that opens “Das Lied von der Erde,” the wild nightmare of a tormented composer driven to analysis. Here it was a bit too amusing, the kind of dream that simply sends you back to sleep.