Shostakovich – and jazz?! But of course. A versatile pianist and composer, he had many artistic personas. He wrote both symphonies and film scores, as well as music for theatre and ballet. The composer’s friend, Levon Atovmyan, made a suite from miscellaneous numbers of his various works destined for cinema, which had to wait for its premiere until 1988. After that, one of its parts, Waltz, attracted the attention of the widely popular violinist, André Rieu, whose recording of it eventually made it to the top of the time’s charts. Somewhat later on, the popularity of this “decadent” waltz was still heightened after the film director Stanley Kubrick used it in his mystery drama Eyes Wide Shut.

In terms of status, that enjoyed by Duke Ellington in America has been equalled in France by Claude Bolling. A child prodigy, as a teenager he already managed to play alongside giants of jazz music. As a composer, he stayed away from avant-garde idioms like bebop, eventually finding his home turf in the world of traditional jazz. He also wrote music for films, producing scores in which he elaborately blended jazz and classical elements. His Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano Trio, which he recorded with Jean-Pierre Rampal, stayed at the top of charts for close to two years. In its turn, the Suite for Cello and Jazz Piano Trio opens with a contrapuntal passage which can easily make the listener feel they have been transported to the world of Baroque music. The ensuing transition to the classic jazz style may be sudden yet it is by no means aggressive. Bolling was a master of nimble alternations between playful and explosively rhythmed fast sequences, and lyrical parts. Notwithstanding the dominant position this suite assigns to the cello, its score also clearly betrays it was composed by a brilliant pianist.