Adam Makowicz and Leszek Mozdzer: Makowicz vs. Mozdzer at Carnegie Hall (2005)

Joel Roberts

CD/DVD Reviewer since 1999

Joel Roberts has been contirbuting to AAJ since its earliest days.

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Published: May 6, 2005

Adam Makowicz and Leszek Mozdzer: Makowicz vs. Mozdzer at Carnegie Hall

Adam Makowicz has such phenomenal technique at the keyboard that it sometimes sounds as if he's playing with four hands. On his latest album there really are four hands at work, though two of them belong to fellow Polish piano sensation Leszek Mozdzer. Their solo and duet excursions on Chopin and popular standards, recorded live at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall last year, make for one of the most stunning showcases of piano virtuosity in recent memory.

Makowicz, a New Yorker for 25 years since fleeing his then-repressive homeland, opens the album with a pair of jazz improvisations on Chopin that steer the great Polish composer's romantic melodies through an entirely seamless web of blues, swing, and bebop, even adding a touch of stride. It's a tough act to follow, much less sit side by side with, but the thirty-something Mozdzer—a new face on the American scene, but a major figure in Polish jazz—proves he's up to the task on three Chopin duets with Makowicz.

Rather than battle with piano pyrotechnics, the two men engage in a performance of restraint, subtlety, and supreme musical sympathy, making it hard to tell where one pair of hands ends and the other begins. Mozdzer follows with a solo nod to his colleague's piano hero on Makowicz' "Tatum on My Mind. (A solo Mozdzer recital at Merkin Concert Hall last month showed him an engagingly offbeat performer—and dresser—as he dazzled the audience with more Chopin and a handful of impressionistic originals that recalled Keith Jarrett's '70s-era improvisations.)

The set closes with a half-dozen often breathtaking duet takes on standards by Richard Rodgers, Leonard Bernstein, Cole Porter, and Duke Ellington. As an encore, Makowicz and Mozdzer turn to a piece that epitomizes the album's Poland meets New York credo: Krzysztof Komeda's theme from Roman Polanski's '60s New York City horror classic Rosemary's Baby. This celebration of Poland and America, classical music and jazz, is already a platinum seller in Poland; it warrants serious attention from jazz fans around the world.

Track Listing: Frederic Chopin: Prelude 24 in D Minor, Op 28; Fantasie - Impromptu, Op 66; Prelude in G major no. 3, Op 28; Prelude in E major, no. 7, Op 28; Prelude in E flat major, no. 17, Op 28; Tatum on My Mind, Surrey with the Fringe on Top, Some Other Time, Love is Here to Stay, Begin the Beguine, Night and Day, Caravan, Rosemary's Baby.

Personnel: Adam Makowicz and Leszek Mozdzer, piano.

Record Label: EMI Poland
Style: Beyond Jazz