Tales of the Jazz Age Florian Noack

• James Price Johnson (1894 - 1955):
• 1 Johnson: Charleston (Arr. for Piano by Florian Noack) 02:07
• Fats Waller (1904 - 1943), Harry Akst (1893 - 1963):
• 2 Waller, Akst: Dinah (Arr. for Piano by Florian Noack) 03:06
• Fats Waller:
• 3 Waller: Squeeze Me (Arr. for Piano by Florian Noack) 03:03
• 4 Waller: Bye Bye Baby (Arr. for Piano by Florian Noack) 02:06
• Maurice Ravel (1875 - 1937):
• 5 Ravel: L'enfant et les sortilèges, M. 71: Five O'Clock Fox-Trot (Arr. for Piano by H. Gil-Marchex) 06:02
• Francis Poulenc (1899 - 1963):
• 6 Poulenc: Valse for l'Album des Six, FP 17 01:55
• 7 Poulenc: Mouvements perpétuels, FP 14a: I. Assez modéré 01:21
• 8 Poulenc: Mouvements perpétuels, FP 14a: II. Modéré 01:26
• 9 Poulenc: Mouvements perpétuels, FP 14a: III. Alerte 02:40
• Clément Doucet (1895 - 1950):
• 10 Doucet: Isoldina 02:12
• George Gershwin (1898 - 1937):
• 11 Gershwin: Slap That Bass (Arr. for piano by Florian Noack) 02:12
• 12 Gershwin: How Long Has This Been Going On? (Arr. for Piano by Florian Noack) 03:22
• 13 Gershwin: What Causes That? (Arr. for Piano by Florian Noack) 03:33
• Mischa Spoliansky (1898 - 1985):
• 14 Spoliansky: Morphium (Arr. for Piano by Florian Noack) 03:39
• Kurt Weill (1900 - 1950):
• 15 Weill: The Threepenny Opera, Act I: Die Moritat von Mackie Messer (Arr. for Piano by Florian Noack) 02:06
• 16 Weill: The Threepenny Opera, Act II: Pollys Lied (Arr. for Piano by Florian Noack) 02:26
• 17 Weill: The Threepenny Opera, Act II: Tango-Ballade (Arr. for Piano by Florian Noack) 02:42
• Erwin Schulhoff (1894 - 1942):
• 18 Schulhoff: Suite Dansante en Jazz, WV 98: I. Stomp 00:52
• 19 Schulhoff: Suite Dansante en Jazz, WV 98: II. Strait 04:00
• 20 Schulhoff: Suite Dansante en Jazz, WV 98: III. Waltz 04:41
• 21 Schulhoff: Suite Dansante en Jazz, WV 98: IV. Tango 03:14
• 22 Schulhoff: Suite Dansante en Jazz, WV 98: V. Slow 04:47
• 23 Schulhoff: Suite Dansante en Jazz, WV 98: VI. Fox-Trot 01:39
• Leo Ornstein (1893 - 2002):
• 24 Ornstein: Suicide in an Airplane, SO 6 03:48
• Total Runtime 01:08:59

Info for Tales of the Jazz Age

With Tales of the Jazz Age, Florian Noack dives into the heart of the Roaring Twenties to unearth its soundtrack — a mix of cheeky ragtime, biting jazz, and sparks of modernity. Through this collection of rare works and special transcriptions, he gives voice once more to a feverish era in which music, like society itself, was striving to reinvent its forms. From Johnson to Ornstein, with stops along the way for Gershwin, Poulenc, and Schulhoff, this album is a jubilant journey, driven by a performance that is at once stylized, incisive, and free.

Florian Noack embraces the syncopated vitality of stride, the ironic tenderness of Berlin cabaret, and the poetic brilliance of the avant-garde. He makes the piano resound like a multifaceted voice — by turns festive, subversive, elegiac — in a dialogue between surface lightness and underlying gravity. A bold, erudite, and vibrant project that celebrates a chiaroscuro era, poised to dance on the edge of chaos.

Tales of the Jazz Age is a solo piano recital with a thousand voices. In this flamboyant musical fresco, Florian Noack weaves together the frantic rhythms of the Roaring Twenties with the bittersweet irony of a world in flux. Between unbridled swing, refined satire, and artistic effervescence, the programme revisits a repertoire at the crossroads of classical music and jazz.

From Fats Waller to George Gershwin, from Kurt Weill to Erwin Schulhoff, each piece reveals a slice of history, a flash of festivity, or a shadow cast by the coming war. Through his own arrangements — often in world premieres — Florian Noack breathes new life into these works with infectious energy, ornamental precision, and rhythmic freedom, reinventing the spirit of the cabaret, the music hall, and the Parisian and Berlin salons of the 1920s.

More than a mere tribute, Tales of the Jazz Age is a pianistic manifesto: a dizzying dive into the contradictions of an era in metamorphosis, torn between exuberance and disillusionment, carefreeness and foreboding. Each note becomes an echo of an intoxicated world, suspended between two cataclysms.

With elegance and flair, Florian Noack invites us to dance on the embers of a bygone age, and to listen — in the crackle of an imaginary 78 rpm record — to the heartbeat of a century dreaming itself into modernity through jazz.

Florian Noack, piano

Florian Noack
For his CD recording of his own piano transcriptions and paraphrases of orchestral works by Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Rachmaninov, the young Belgian pianist Florian Noack was named “Nachwuchskünstler des Jahres 2015, Klavier” (Emerging Artist of the Year, piano”) by ECHO Klassik, a prestigious award which confirms the unique talent of this exceptional musician.

Florian Noack has won numerous prizes at national and international competitions, including the Rachmaninov International Competition, the International Robert Schumann Competition and the Piano Competition in Cologne. He also won the “Grandpiano” Prize from the Belgian Vocational Foundation, and has received grants and scholarships from Spes, the Fondation Banque Populaire and from the Mozart Gesellschaft.

He performs regularly at many festivals in China, South Korea, the United States, France, Germany and Belgium, and gives recitals in among others the Philharmonie in Cologne, the Beijing Concert Hall, the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels, the Oriental Art Center in Shanghai, the Xinghai Concert Hall in Guangzhou, the Konzerthaus in Detmold and the Comédie des Champs-Elysées in Paris. In France, he is a regular guest of many festivals including the Chopin Festival, the Festival of Annecy, Piano en Valois, l’Esprit du Piano, and Pianissimes.

Florian distinguishes himself by his passion for rare works from the romantic and post-romantic repertoire, and for his concert programs which often include composers such as Lyapunov, Alkan, Medtner and Dohnanyi. He has also authored transcriptions based on orchestral works by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and Rimsky-Korsakov, and which have been attracting the attention of musicians such as Boris Berezovsky and Cyprien Katsaris.

As soloist he has performed with orchestras including the WDR Rundfunkorchester, the Philharmonie Südwestfalen, the Charlemagne Chamber Orchestra, the Symphonic Orchestra of Aquitaine and the Philharmonisches Orchester Zwickau.

Florian has recently started recording the complete works for solo piano by Sergei Lyapunov for the German label Ars Produktion. For his recording of his own transcriptions and paraphrases for the same label he received an ECHO Klassik as well as a nomination for an International Classical Music Award.

Florian Noack was born in 1990 in Brussels. He began playing the piano at the age of 4, and aged 12, entered the Queen Elisabeth Musical Chapel in the program for Exceptional Young Talent, where he studied under Yuka Izutsu. He pursued his studies at the Musikhochschule in Cologne with the Russian pianist and composer, Vassily Lobanov, and at the Musikhochschule Basel with Claudio Martinez-Mehner.

Booklet for Tales of the Jazz Age