Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays The Beatles (CD Review)

by Karl Nehring

I Am the Walrus; Your Mother Should Know; I Saw Her Standing There; For No One; Baby’s in Black; She Said She Said; Here, There, and Everywhere; If I Needed Someone; Maxwell’s Silver Hammer; Golden Slumbers; Life on Mars? Brad Mehldau, piano. Nonesuch 075597907407

 

The American pianist Brad Mehldau (b. 1970) is best known for his work in jazz, most notably as the leader of his own trio, but also for his work with musicians such as Pat Metheny, Chris Thile, and Josh Redman. However, his musical interests are not restricted to jazz alone. For example, he has composed songs and performed recitals with singers such as Renee Fleming and  Anne Sofie von Otter. Other examples of his wide musical interests and talents include: his solo piano album After Bach, which contains five selections from Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier plus some Mehldau pieces inspired by them; an album titled Taming then Dragon on which he plays a variety of electronic synthesizers teamed with drummer/percussionist Mark Giuliana; and an album where he performs what is essentially a piano concerto of his own composition, accompanied by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Our review of that album, titled  Variations on a Melancholy Theme, can be found here. 

His most recent effort comprises his solo piano interpretations of 11 songs, 10 of them by the Beatles and one by David Bowie. Please rest assured that were Mehldau simply to be banging these out on the keyboard as simple-minded pop tunes, I would not be posting a review of this album on Classical Candor. But as you might have gleaned from the above paragraph, Mehldau is a serious musician, and he takes this music seriously. We sometimes forget that our revered classical music composers were often interested in and sometimes inspired by the popular music of their own era. There is a Nonesuch website promotional website for the album that includes several short videos, one of which features Mehldau discussing how he views the “swing” inherent in some of the rock music of his day and his approach to playing the title tune from this album. If you are interested, you can find that website here.

 

One of the reasons that Mehldau came to appreciate the music of the Beatles is that it is music that has endured. Although the group disbanded more than 50 years ago, there is still a strong interest in their music. Mehldau begins his liner note essay by observing, “In his book The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages, the scholar Harold Bloom confronted the question of what makes particular books endure: ‘The answer, more often than not, has turned out to be strangeness, a mode of originality that either cannot be assimilated, or at so assimilates us that we cease to see it as strange. If we look at The Beatles and the multitude of artists who have been influenced by one or another facet of their oeuvre, this paradoxical recipe for longevity is one way to consider their ongoing footprint. For there is a good deal of strangeness to much of their music, particularly in the series of game-changing albums that begin with Rubber Soul through the release of their final record, Let It Be.” He goes on to mention music by the Beach Boys (the album Pet Sounds) and Zombies (the album Odyssey and Oracle) as embodying that same swinging “dotted feel” that he discussed in his video before going on to note that “what was new as well in all those ‘swinging’ songs from those three bands was a way of building the sounds around the piano, instead of the guitar – or some harpsichord-like variant of the piano. It gave the music a different kind of harmonic imprint, as it moved away from the bending blue notes of guitars towards a new variety of chordal progressions, often more reminiscent of Romantic-era classical music than rhythm and blues.”

From the opening notes of the first song, I Am the Walrus, you can hear that no, this is not going to be just a straightforward run-through of familiar simple melodies. Mehldau throws in some harmonic surprises, a few little dissonances here and there – not enough to be disturbing, but enough to add some zest. (Does anyone remember Angela from the television series The Office tearfully exclaiming, “jazz is stupid – why can’t they just play the right notes?”) And so it continues, as Mehldau brings not just his jazz sensibilities but also a hints of his classical leanings to his interpretations. A bit of boogie-woogie (I Saw Her Standing There), a blend of gospel and Romanticism (She Said She Said), some interesting modulations and harmonic shifts (Here, There, and Everywhere), counterpoint (If I Needed Someone), a kind of  harmonically ambiguous post-modern ragtime style (Maxwell’ Silver Hammer), a sweetly lyrical, somewhat ornamented approach (Golden Slumbers), then ending with a lyrical ballad style (Life on Mars?) to close the program with the one non=Beatles number. 

 

The recording was made over the course of a couple of live performances in Paris, so these is some audience noise and applause, although not enough that I would think most listeners would mind bothersome. The piano sound itself is robust, full on the bottom end and not harsh or clangy on top. Highly recommended to those looking for some top-quality piano music from outside the classical mainstream – and to all Beatles fans, too, of course.