The Austrian baritone Georg Nigl’s disc with pianist Olga Pashchenko mostly replicates a recital the pair gave at the Berlin festival in September last year. Georg Nigl/Olga Pashchenko: Vanitas: Schubert, Beethoven & Rihm album cover. He got as far as starting to make plans for a farewell concert. It required several dozen musicians on stage to recreate the album’s arrangements, with full horn and string sections (that harp! Iraqi Fighters Try to Beat Back ISIS in New Trailer for 'Mosul', Trump Supporters, Like Their Leader, Refuse to Face Reality, Why Sex Workers Are Wary of Kamala Harris, Watch Dave Chappelle’s Incisive Post-Election ‘SNL’ Monologue, ‘The Liberator’ Revisits World War II Through a New Lens. Top 100 Album Review: #56 – Songs in the Key of Life (1976) Stevie’s Magnus Opus. Elsewhere, Wonder sings of “Village Ghetto Land,” describing an almost Brechtian scene of despair and corruption over a deliberately ironic piece of elegant, mock-classical music. Extracts from three sonnets provide the material for the seven songs; the mostly short texts dwell upon the transience of life, though they don’t include anything from Gryphius’s most famous poem, All Is Vanity, which provides the title for the disc. Erinnerung, Christiane Karg’s first solo disc for Harmonia Mundi, is devoted to Mahler. Wonder’s particular genius is that his carefully crafted perfection sounds so convincingly offhand. After Songs in the Key of Life, though, something seemed to deflate in Stevie Wonder’s work. Its ambition and scope were unprecedented, its power and resonance were timeless—and when it was done, he never approached its caliber or impact again. The excessive gratitude (including an alphabetical list of over 150 names, from Abdul Jabbar to Frank Zappa) stands in contrast to the production credits, which are typically spare. He responded with two albums in 1972, the breakthrough Music of My Mind and his first true masterwork, Talking Book. Pashchenko plays a modern Steinway for Vermischter Traum, but opts for a fortepiano, a modern copy of an 1819 Graf instrument, for Schubert and Beethoven. It seems more of a jazz album nowadays than it might have done but this, in my opinion, only adds to it;s merits. This song, like a number of the longer cuts on the album, drags into repetition at the end but Stevie’s vocals are so charged and varied that he pushes you past the point of boredom; the words themselves fade as that voice grabs hold. But it’s also one of the record’s annoyances — it has no focus or coherence. Certainly, the public understood. Unfortunately, at their worst they’re convoluted, awkward, atrociously rhymed and so tangled up in their pretensions to “poetic” style that they become almost comical. His voice contains its own history, from the riveting rawness of Little Stevie Wonder to the husky, warm ballad style of his recent albums. Though the words to “Pastime Paradise” may make you want to run from the room, the music will keep you there, with its fascinating blend of what sounds like a string quartet set to a delicate Latin beat. Part of the problem is the bulk of the material. Kanye West said in 2005, around the release of Late Registration, “I'm not trying to compete with what's out there now. ‘Songs In The Key Of Life’: Revisiting Stevie Wonder’s Magnum Opus This is a genuine classic, in a world where that has become an overused citation. until the dolphin flies and parrots live at sea”). And make no mistake—it was an era of superstar acts and chart-busting albums, but no one was as universally loved, respected, and honored as he was. “Knocks Me off My Feet” is slighter, more amused —, I don’t want to bore you with my trouble But there’s sumptin ’bout your love That makes me weak and Knocks me off my feet. If its titular concern - life - doesn't exactly allow for rigid focus, it's still a fiercely inspired collection of songs and one of the definitive soul records of the 1970s. It sounds musically blasphemous to say something like that, but why not set that as your bar?” Still, it was a genuine event when Stevie Wonder decided to take Songs in the Key of Life to the stage 38 years after its release, and bring the spotlight back to his greatest musical accomplishment. *Songs in the Key of Life *was the culmination of a historic period of creativity for Stevie Wonder. “Another Star” bursts with an aching, tender passion —, For you There might be a brighter star But through my eyes the light of you is all I see. The album offers something fresh at each listening, something right for every mood. There’s an easy familiarity about their Schubert performances, an almost private intimacy in which nothing is overstated, but the Beethoven cycle never quite catches fire; some distinctly slow tempi, especially in the first song, don’t help. Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life, like some big Hollywood studio blockbuster, comes to us already weighted down with words, stabbed with exclamation points and wrapped — or is it shrouded? Wonder’s message songs have always been a bit heavy-handed, but “Black Man,” at 8:29 the album’s longest track, is one of his most effective. Sometimes, more is more. It was like there was nowhere left to go after Songs in the Key of Life—and maybe there wasn’t. Vanitas: Lieder by Schubert, Beethoven and Rihm review – songs in the key of life. Set to a percolating, popping rhythm, the song is essentially didactic, a Bicentennial history lesson drawing together key figures in America’s melting pot with a forceful chorus that preaches (and sometimes demands), “It’s time we learned/This world was made for all men.” It ends with a shrill, aggressive question-and-answer session that might work as a teaching tool but is too brutal for a piece of music. Elton John and Prince said that it was their favorite album. Yet this was the very rare case in which there was simply no way to overhype the music. Motown flew press and everyone who had worked on the album to the Long View Farm studio in Massachusetts for the first playback and a battery of interviews with Wonder, presenting everybody with autographed copies of the album. • Christgau, Robert (November 8, 1976). And the song’s final build, joining Wonder’s vocal with a gospel choir and chanting Hare Krishna followers, is as inventive and exciting as anything on the album. And won’t let go. For you There might be another song But all my heart can hear is your melody, — that’s turned loose in the dense, danceable Brazilian-flavored production. The eclecticism is rich and welcome, but the overall effect is haphazard, turning what might have been a stunning, exotic feast into a hastily organized potluck supper. And he delights in playing these voices against one another from separate tracks, teasing us with his virtuosity, flaunting it with jumping, jiving glee. Motown staffers printed up T-shirts that read, “We’re Almost Finished.” And when the twenty-one-song set was finally released on September 28, 1976, the promotional campaign borrowed some pages from the playbook for the previous year’s record-shattering movie Jaws, which had redefined the making and meaning of a true blockbuster.
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