American composers have been repeatedly confounded by the supposed difference between popular and classical idioms. Leonard Bernstein used to be driven crazy by the fact that his serious compositional efforts were routinely derided, despite their obvious craft and brilliance, because he had had the "misfortune" to also delve into musical theater writing. Even worse, he had actually been successful at it, giving the world a slew of new pop music standards from such shows as Wonderful Town and, of course, West Side Story. Strangely, that same bugaboo didn't haunt one of his predecessors in the Great American Hall of Composers quite so much. Maybe that's because George Gershwin first found fame as a pop songwriter and despite his obvious mastery of songcraft and compositional technique in general, he never deigned to see himself really as a "serious" composer, despite his obvious ambitions in grander forms and approaches in such works as Porgy and Bess, not to mention the three orchestral pieces for which is most widely remembered, Rhapsody in Blue, An American In Paris and the Concerto in F. He was famously shy about even attempting something as grandiose as the Rhapsody, and just as famously refused to orchestrate it himself, leaving that task to Ferde Grofé, of Grand Canyon Suite fame.
Rhapsody in Blue remains of absolutely paramount importance in the history and development of a truly idiomatic American music. In fact before its arrival most American composers either trod the path of fairly traditional songwriting (think Irving Berlin) or European style orchestral pieces (think Edward MacDowell). Yes, there were the iconoclasts, impossible to categorize, like Charles Ives, but really there were those two camps for the most part, and that was that. When Gershwin arrived on the scene in the late teens and then really scoring in the roaring 1920s, he immediately brought a freshness and insouciance to songwriting such as American ears had never heard before. Incredibly sophisticated from a harmonic standpoint, in part I believe due to his absolutely gargantuan hands which could voice complex chords spanning several octaves quite easily, but always maintaining a completely accessible melodic through line, Gershwin was already introducing a more aristocratic air to the popular song, almost from his first attempts in the genre.
The Mack Sisters
The genesis of Rhapsody in Blue was, as with so many masterpieces, a rather serendipitous affair touched with just the right amount of chaos and, perhaps, compositional mania. The roaring twenties were the time of the nascent jazz band, and none was more popular than Paul Whiteman's group. Whiteman nonetheless had his own ambitions to cultivate a more cultured aura for both his troupe and the art form as a whole, and after having collaborated with Gershwin on a failed one act opera, decided to give an all jazz concert which would premiere several new works of more highly articulated forms than the standard 32 bar song with solo breaks. Whiteman asked Gershwin to write some kind of concerto, but it wasn't until Gershwin's brother Ira saw a newspaper article claiming George was already at work on the project that Gershwin finally relented and decided to forge ahead with the piece. At that point, he had less than two months to complete it.
Rhapsody was largely written on a 1924 train ride to Boston, and Gershwin long maintained that the rhythms of that rail journey underlay the propulsive motives of the piece. As he further relayed, "I frequently hear music in the very heart of the noise." He envisioned the Rhapsody "a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our blues, our metropolitan madness." He completed the original two piano version which is performed on this Surround Records release, which was then orchestrated (three times, actually) by Grofé.
Gershwin got over his reticence vis a vis larger scale works and by 1926 was about to tackle his only full scale operatic project, the iconic Porgy and Bess. Though this piece has never achieved the sort of repertoire-level success its pop culture resonances would seem to dictate (there's that dichotomy again), it has nonetheless provided American music with some of the most luscious vocal music ever written in either the operatic or popular music worlds. Australian born Percy Grainger, whom I wrote about in my recent review of the Grieg Piano Rolls release, did the marvelous Fantasy for Two Pianos arrangement of some of Porgy's most redolent themes contained on this Blu-ray. It, like Rhapsody, is a florid, often incredibly propulsive, piece, that nonetheless captures the lyricism that infused so much of Gershwin's writing, especially in such an epochal song as "Summertime."
Rounding out this audio Blu-ray are the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, arranged for two pianos by American opera and art song composer John Musto. Bernstein famously based his entire West Side Story score on the "devilish" interval of a tritone, managing to make that most unsingable leap beautifully melodic and archly violent by turn. Musto offers both some of the better known "tunes" (Lenny would probably not like me saying that) as well as the incredible dance music that highlights the high school scene of the musical. Bernstein may have felt during his lifetime he was bashing his head against the brick wall of his own success, but the enduring importance of West Side Story proves that he was uniquely capable of melding classical and popular idioms into an equally uniquely American sounding whole.
Sisters Yuki and Tomoko Mack are a heralded pair who hail from Japan and have release four well regarded CDs thus far in their burgeoning career. They are impeccably clear and precise players and do very well with the relentless movement that each of these pieces offers. I did have some passing qualms with their overly mannered interpretation of the Rhapsody, an interpretation that added too many grace notes not in Gershwin's original score, and also lurched from tenuto to tenuto (much like, in fact, Grainger's interpretation of the Grieg A Minor Concerto I reviewed recently). The Rhapsody needs to be like that train ride Gershwin took so long ago—a long, steady trip through one glorious melody after another. Yes, "stopping by the wayside," as it were, from time to time to enjoy the scenery is all fine and good, but too often in this version, the Mack's pull the emergency stop handle at inopportune moments, and then ask us to whisk away again at top speed.
Luckily the Porgy Suite and Symphonic Dances have less of this propensity toward Artistry-with-a-capital-A, and the music is therefore freer to shine through, as it most assuredly always should. Porgy is alternately brisk and quietly languid, while the Bernstein piece is, much as the composer himself, brash, self-assured and brimming with that most American by-product, confidence.
This is an overall very appealing trio of "all American" pieces which proves that while the composers themselves may have been confounded by critical reaction decrying the mixing of classical and popular idioms, we listeners are the lucky recipients of music that refuses to be pigeon holed and offers a kaleidoscope of aural delights.
Alexander Jero always provides an excitingly ambient aural experience with his Surround Records releases. One might wonder why go to the trouble of creating a DTS-HD MA 7.1 mix for a two piano offering such as this, but the results are for the most part quite pleasing. High range clarity is where this recording really excels, with a crystalline sound and excellent directionality between the two keyboards. The surround channels provide just the right amount of reflective hall ambience to convince the listener he's right there between the Macks. I was a little less impressed with the mid- and low ranges, especially in Rhapsody where there was occasional muddiness and too omnipresent LFE. These elements were significantly better in both the Porgy Fantasy and the Symphonic Dances. In both of these latter pieces, balance between frequency ranges was excellent, with a crispness of detail and nuance in the playing that made the listening experience both visceral and very enjoyable. The 7.1 track offers sampling rates of 96 kHz, with a backward compatible 5.1 core at a bitrate of 1509 kbps.
The "Surround" experience may have been more immersive with the orchestral versions of both the Rhapsody and the Symphonic Dances, but of course hiring an orchestra is more prohibitively expensive than the two admittedly dynamic pianists featured here. Some Gershwin purists may be a bit up in arms over their Rhapsody. It has touches of brilliance and even elegance, but it's too mannered for its own good and robs the piece of some of its American genius. Porgy and the Symphonic Dances fare much better, with assured and graceful performances that cull both the rhythmic complexities as well as the melodic lyricism out of both pieces.
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