Albert Bover & Horacio Fumero - Duo (1995)

AllMusic Review by Thom Jurek
Pianist Albert Bover and bassist Horacio Fumero are technicians of the sacred. They boldly go where usually only quartets have gone before in search of that missing something in a classic jazz composition. They are both graduates of musical conservatories and it shows. Their technical proficiency on this program is almost without compare. But that is also this disc's greatest problem. To this reviewer's knowledge Charlie Parker never intended "Au Privae" to be an exercise in scalar modularity as opposed to a slamming bebop tune that used scales as a way to go somewhere else, and Wayne Shorter would be aghast at the stilted chromaticism in the middle section of his "Infant Eyes." While it's tempting to be swept away by the duo's musicianship on the faster numbers, such as McCoy Tyner's "Inception" and Bird's "Bluebird," there is a false sense of emotional understanding that all that speed and dexterity attempts to cover. And on the ballads, such as Shorter's, "Darn That Dream," or "You Don't Know What Love Is," with everything the pair tries to add with their muscle, their notion of lyric sensibility gets lost -- or perhaps isn't present because it was never found is more like it. Whatever the reason, this sounds like a record made by a couple of super-choppers, and the thrill of their attack wears off very quickly.

Albert Bover (p)
Horacio Fumero (b)