Playing pool with Gershwin and Mozart
Kick those clouds away, and imagine, if you will, that Big Pool Hall in the sky.
Over there, at a table to the left, it’s Will “The Stratford Flash” Shakespeare applying some English in a game against Samuel “Dapper Dickie” Pepys. To the right, why it’s Mary Queen of Scots taking on Queen Victoria. Whoa, there. Billiard cues down, miladies, cues down, please.
But who are those two, hanging around at the rear of the hall? The guy in the suit and tie, chomping on an unlit Don Sebastian? And the other guy in the white frock coat with the Manchester cotton waistcoat and a slightly deformed left ear? It’s George “Pretty Boy” Gershwin lining up a shot in a three-cushion game against Wolfgang “Fast Amadeus” Mozart.
A preposterous fantasy? Sure, but that was the impulse behind Sara Davis Buechner’s Music Niagara solo piano recital featuring works by Mozart and Gershwin on Monday, August 8 at 7:30 p.m. in St. Mark’s Church, 41 Byron St., Niagara-on-the-Lake.
“What if Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and George Gershwin decided to get together and shoot a round of pool? They both enjoyed billiards,” Buechner said last month over the phone from a Philadelphia hotel room before flying out to take up a two-week residency at Orford Music in Québec.
“So, I had this idea, OK, Mozart Meets Gershwin, you know, kind of thing. And I can’t really tell you there’s a whole lot of intellectual thought into that program beyond that beginning supposition other than trying to choose pieces that represent those composers at the height of their game, at the height of their powers, and pieces that demonstrate the top of their virtuosic skills.”
Buechner will open with the “D Minor Fantasy” KV 397, a “miniature-opera” as she calls it, which will flow right into the “D Major ‘Dürnitz’ Sonata.”
“The high point of the “Dürnitz” is its last movement, a magnificent set of the theme and variations,” said Buechner. “It shows just about every trick that Mozart has to show: crossing hands, double notes, beautifully slow variations as well. A marvellously structured piece.”
Mozart’s “A Minor Sonata” KV 310 will end the first half.
After the interval, Buechner will perform four foxtrots by Gershwin, “Swanee,” the 1919 hit that put him on the map, “Novelette in Fourths,” “Do-Do-Do,” and “Kickin’ the Clouds Away.”
Buechner says that in Gershwin’s foxtrot style, the composer often used the trick of having the left hand cross over the right, something Mozart did centuries earlier in the “Dürnitz.” Yes, others have done that too, so truly there is nothing new under the sun.
The recital will end with Gershwin’s solo piano version of “Rhapsody in Blue,” a work Buechner committed to disc in 2005. For an encore, Buechner says she has something up her sleeve, but it won’t be Mozart or Gershwin. Tickets are $40. Call 1-800-511-7429 or 905-468-2172.
On Thursday, August 11 at 7:30 p.m., Buechner will make a return engagement at the Brott Festival performing a work influenced in part by Gershwin, Maurice Ravel’s “Piano Concerto in G” with the National Academy Orchestra at the McIntyre Performing Arts Centre.
“It’s really funny how Ravel appropriated a lot of Gershwinisms without it coming to sound like imitation Gershwin,” said Buechner. “You realize what a great, great composer that he was to be able to do that. Ravel managed to take these blues chords and some of the energetic playing of the foxtrot driving rhythms and sort of Gallicize and make it this 1920s jazz sound. The piece, of course, is not jazz. The second movement, nobody could have written that melody. It’s a sad, sad cabaret song of the very highest order, very profoundly beautiful.”
Ravel once opined that melody “recalls Mozart, the Mozart of the ‘Clarinet Quintet’ … the most beautiful piece he wrote.” Later, Ravel revealed just how much that flowing phrase cost him: “How I worked over it bar by bar. It nearly killed me.”
If you clap long enough after the Ravel, Buechner may just pull out one of the Gershwin foxtrots. If you clap long enough after that, Buechner may just pull out another of the Gershwin foxtrots. And if you … Well, you get the idea.
The bill also includes Tchaikovsky’s “Fifth Symphony” and Ana Sokolovic’s “Ringelspiel.” Tickets are $32, senior $27, Brott35 $25, student $15. Call 905-525-7664.