For classical listeners who are used to a certain, domesticated type of musical interchange between classical and jazz, it will be useful to quote Alexis Weissenberg's explanation of the title of his Sonate en état de jazz, to better explain what he is trying to do: "A sonata in the style of jazz, like an inebriated person; hysterical, infatuated and inspired, is not a conventional compositional state. Its echoes of after-shock and its consequences, its palpitations, its over-enthusiastic nature and its feeling require an application of cubism, and can only be made clear with a certain sense of insanity." Weissenberg lays this somewhat unusual conception of jazz, as expressed in four non-jazz types of popular music, on a firm foundation of classical construction, and the resulting tension makes for an interesting, if unconventional, work. The first movement, an "Évocation d'un tango," is set in triple time, but has the tango's rhythmic pulse behind it, as articulated in the heavy syncopation which opens the work. The opening music also retains the world-weary languor of the tango, a feeling that persists even as the material becomes more pianistically demanding. The ebb and flow of high passion, as the music reaches dense climaxes and descends to quieter places, always feels somewhat desperate. The "Réminiscence d'un charleston" breaks that mood with its motoric rhythms and freewheeling spirit, both suggesting what Weissenberg calls "the desired mechanical effect . . . of an acceleration." Abrupt turns and jumps characterize both the melody and the harmony, even when this Charleston slows down to something less than a jackrabbit pace. In Weissenberg's description, "The Blues is above all a cry of solitude, and sometimes even an admission of loneliness." For the slow movement, Weissenberg provides a "Reflets d'un blues" whose "melody is inspired by the journey a snake follows as it goes to die in the desert": sinuous, continuous, indefinite yet final. The rhythm never ceases to push the music forward, no matter how desperate the path becomes. A "Provocation d'un samba" closes the work in a more brilliant vein, with bright, lush chords in snappy syncopation that contribute to an atmosphere of "constant and sensual light-headedness." While the Sonate en état de jazz may not live up to the "sense of insanity" that Weissenberg promises, it certainly does take popular music to some strange and interesting places.

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