"Eugen Cicero Plays Schubert," reads the front cover text of this disc. But when you read the back, things start to get a little weird, with track titles like "Ciceros Rosamunde," "Ciceros Heidenröslein" (misspelled, like several other items on this decidedly low-budget reissue), and even "Ciceros Ave Maria." What's happening is that the music, which was recorded in 1975, falls into a group of jazz-classical fusion experiments made during that heady time. The trend flowered in Europe as well as North America;
Cicero was a Romanian-born pianist who worked mostly in Germany, Switzerland, and Japan. At some point -- the rather sparse notes inform us that he "was known to be inclined to drink alcohol often and in great quantities, which caused many problems and inhibited his career," but do not tell us how his unique music developed -- he began to experiment with jazz. Where
Cicero differs from the likes of
Claude Bolling is that his pieces are firmly rooted in individual classical compositions and make use of the full technical arsenal of his classical training.
Cicero is accompanied by bass and percussion in jazz passages (the bassist is the late Danish jazzman
Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen, also misspelled) and by the Württembergisches Kammerorchester of Heilbronn in the passages that lay out Schubert's music more or less unadulterated. The considerable interest of
Cicero's music lies in the variety with which he combines these two elements, and it is here where he improves upon the music of his nearest competitor, the
Jacques Loussier Trio. He may sometimes state his tune and then perform jazz improvisations on it, but more often the form is more complex. In
Cicero's Ave Maria, track 5, the famous tune is withheld until the middle of the piece.
Cicero's Heidenröslein, track 10, begins with a jazz elaboration that disguises the song's limpid melody, which emerges in bits and pieces.
Cicero is adept at posing rhythmic questions that will be answered over the course of a piece, and he passes the key test for jazz-classical fusion -- his music has the spontaneous quality of true jazz. Two pieces are originals, with material composed in Schubertian style. The plainness of the music given to the string orchestra in
Cicero's music apparently led some critics to compare him to easy listening figures like German bandleader
James Last, but closer listening would have scotched the comparison.
Cicero is closer in spirit to the jazz pianists of the early twentieth century who jazzed (or ragged) the classics. Despite the shoestring quality of this reissue, the sound has been transferred well to CD. Highly recommended to listeners with an interest in fusion of any and all kinds.