THOMAS ENHCO - Mozart Paradox | 2LP

What if Mozart, the most beloved composer of all, came back to life today? After his explorations of the repertoires of Bach, Schumann, and Brahms, Thomas Enhco continues to build bridges between jazz and classical music by delving this time into the immense work of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, as part of an album titled "Mozart Paradox." In a solo piano performance, he improvises with complete freedom on the eternal themes Mozart offered in genres as varied as sonatas, symphonies, string quartets, concertos, sacred music, and opera. A jazzman of the highest order, Thomas Enhco is also an accomplished classical soloist, regularly invited by symphony orchestras worldwide to perform concertos by Mozart, Ravel, and Gershwin. In 2022, his improvisation on the "Lacrimosa" from the famous Requiem left a lasting impression and provided the starting point for this solo piano project full of surprises, which revisits universally cherished themes in a modern, intimate way, brimming with the fire and freshness characteristic of the most beloved of composers. Thomas Enhco summarizes Mozart Paradox: "Mozart has accompanied me since childhood. I heard my mother sing his opera arias and my grandfather conduct his symphonies. On the violin (my first instrument) I worked on sonatas, concertos, and duos; on the piano, fantasies, chamber music, and concertos, some of which I had the opportunity to perform in concert in recent years. Yet, as a jazz musician, I had never yet drawn from his work to improvise, as I had done with Bach, Brahms, or Schumann. Last September, I went into the studio for three days and started recording improvisations, but something was wrong, I doubted more and more as the takes accumulated; we then decided to invite about ten people to attend a private concert in the studio, two nights in a row. It was much more natural for me to play this spontaneous music for a flesh-and-blood audience, and what is recorded on this album largely comes from these two concerts. This album is for me totally jazz, in its essence (improvisation, rhythms, harmonies, a way of varying around a theme as in the tradition of jazz standards). Moreover, it is a solo piano album, without any other instrument or effect, but which attempts to evoke, as in all of Mozart's music, opera singers and theatre characters."