It must have been in the late 1960s or early ’70s that I first encountered an album called the Baroque Beatles Book. I don’t remember much about the performers–but it was an ingeniously arranged and performed take on many of the Fab Four’s more engaging and now-classic tunes. Then, sometime in the 1980s came the brilliant Bach Meets the Beatles and its companion Bach on Abbey Road, performed in an amazing improvisational style by pianist John Bayless (these gems may be available as imports or in used record stores on the Pro Arte label). Something about these enduring Lennon/McCartney songs, from “She Loves You” and “Lady Madonna” to “Michelle”, “Hey Jude”, and “She’s Leaving Home” just compels composer/arrangers to keep trying to Baroque-ify them. And although Peter Breiner obviously must have had fun with this project, in which he arranges 20 songs into four separate “concerto grosso” settings, he doesn’t consistently manage to find a true stylistic home for the songs he has chosen. Rather than beginning with a solid Baroque-styled conceptualization for each tune and then developing it, Breiner in most instances just lifts some stereotypical 18th century licks and uses them as dressing, not as foundation-stones. We are bounced back and forth from hearing the straight-ahead tune to hearing it jammed into a vaguely familiar Bach or Vivaldi context. There are exceptions, such as the beautifully atmospheric “And I Love Her”, which sounds as if it could be an alternate movement to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. The first song, “She Loves You”, which begins the Concerto Grosso No. 1, is supposedly “in the style of Handel”, but it sounds much more like Bach’s A minor and D minor violin concertos than anything George Frederic ever wrote. Never mind. This isn’t serious stuff, and it’s reasonably entertaining and sonically pleasing. But if you want to hear how effectively it can be done, try to find one or all of the above-mentioned titles. (Anyone still have a copy of the Baroque Beatles Book?)
