One needs only to think of the frilly, cloying excesses of Liberace playing Chopin, or of Freddie Martin's frenetic big band butchering of Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto to witness such adaptive transgressions at their worst. Of course, we can't get too parochial or snobbish, or view our cherished classics as sacrosanct, ossifying the original ideas of the composers as the only and definitive interpretations of their underlying musical ideas.
Musical expression is dynamic, vital, self-referencing, and ever evolving.
We know many of the greatest composers cribbed melodies shamelessly from themselves, from one another, and from the public domain. Thus, when a composer or arranger is able to identify, protect, and showcase the best elements of an original work, while at the same time setting it in a new or different context which adds interest and variety to the comforts of familiarity, then the results start to gain significance. When the composer or arranger is a proven and consummate master of another musical idiom, then the prospects improve immensely. This is the case with Sammy Nestico's tasteful and original adaptations of familiar classical and symphonic repertoire to swing, in his aptly titled Swingphonic charts. Originally arranged for the United States Air Force Band in the 1960s but never before commercially recorded, this collection does a marvelous job of bridging the idiomatic gap between jazz and the classics in a sensitive and quite brilliant fashion.