A revelatory new Gershwin recording
In 1949, pianist Oscar Levant released an LP of the most famous extended work for piano and orchestra ever penned by an American composer: George Gershwin’s Concerto in F (1925).
The piece looms large in our popular culture thanks partly to Levant’s hypervirtuoso performance of excerpts in the beloved GeneKelly film musical “An American in Paris” (1951).
Ever since Levant’s renditions on screen and record, his approach has stood as definitive – the interpretation against which all others are measured.
Nowthere’s another that can stand alongside it.
PianistKevin Cole, currently the country’s leading Gershwin pianist, has released theCD“Gershwin: Concerto in F,” with longtime collaboratorDavid Alan Miller conducting the National Orchestral Institute Philharmonic (on the Naxos label). Though the album also includesworks by American composers JohnHarbison, Joan Tower andWalter Piston, the Concerto in F receives top billing for several reasons.
For starters, Cole and Miller have incorporated musical changes based on the score in Gershwin’s hand at the Library of Congress. The two performers have beenworking with The Gershwin Initiative at theUniversity of Michigan, which is creating performance and critical editions of all the composer’sworks (a monumental task, considering howmuch Gershwin wrote and howlittle of it received scholarly editing
and publishing).
Listeners who knowthe Concerto in F intimately will notice alterations to a long-familiar score, in the form of a more prominent solo part, added harmonic complexity, sharper dissonance and so forth. But you don’t have to be familiar with every note of the Concerto in F to appreciate the power and stature of this recording, which can be considered as close to Gershwin’s intention as is possible at this late date.
Fromthe opening notes, it’s clear that conductor Miller knows exactly what he’s doing, taking a more aggressive tempo in the dramatic opening pages than many listeners may be accustomed to. This is wholly in keeping with the inherent nature of Gershwin’s music, which often sounds as if it’s in a feverish rush. Rhythmic energy, after all, drives Gershwin’s art as much as anything
else. To his credit, conductor Miller also brings forth the brassy Charleston dance rhythm that will pervade the rest of the concerto.
When Cole enters the musical picture, he reminds us of the score’s jazz-blues essence. For though Gershwinwasworking in a concerto template forged by the likes of Liszt and Tchaikovsky, his musical languagewas all American. Pianist Cole tells us as much by emphasizing the lonely-blues quality of the opening piano theme, yet without indulging in the swooning phrases that are the hallmarks of lesser soloists. Similarly, when piano and orchestra arrive at the swelling romantic theme at the firstmovement’s heart, they play it with ample feeling but none of the sloppy sentimentality to which it’s routinely subjected. In so doing, they remind us that
Gershwin— like Irving Berlin, whose music so palpably inspired this melody— was aman of the theater whowrote music that spoke forthrightly and without fuss.
If Cole doesn’t conjure the brashness that Levant brought to the firstmovement’s quasi-ragtime section, he provides instead a sense of whimsy and balletic gracefulness that have their own appeal.
Most performances of the concerto’s nocturnal slowmovement that I’ve encountered tend towallowin dragging tempos and thin, wispy orchestral textures. Once again, Cole and Miller stay true to Gershwin style, understanding that the secondmovement has to press ever forward if its blues-inspired themes are to maintain their grand arc. In his piano solos, Cole proves that Gershwin’s keyboard filigree is not mere cocktail-style pianism
but, rather, a shimmering poetry that’s a tip of the hat to the French Impressionist Maurice Ravel (who returned the compliment in some of his own scores).
The concerto’s thirdmovement finale stands as a tour de force of brilliant keyboard writing, and Levant’s bat-out-of-hell hysteria remains awonder unto itself. His versions on record and in film are so frenetic, percussive and compulsively hard-driving that they’re impossible to forget.
Remarkably, pianist Cole holds his own, taking the movement at quite a clip and conveying the unstoppable, headlong momentum the piecewas built to convey. That Cole in some passages plays more fistfuls of notes thanwe’ve heard before— thanks to the newly enhanced score— only heightens the challenge and the achievement.
Conductor Miller also pushes the orchestra to move relentlessly forward, the ensemble of young artists acquitting itself quite well despite considerable technical hurdles. Yet there’s also a grandeur to the orchestral sound in this movement and the others, as if Millerwere saying the Concerto in F is more than just fodder for pops concerts. To hear this music via the plush sound reproduction capabilities of the 2020s, rather than its fuzzier counterpart of the 1940s, is to appreciate more fully what Gershwin created. Details of orchestration that are muted in other recordings glisten throughout this one.
Through the meticulousness of their note choices and the authenticity of their interpretation, Miller and Cole argue that the Concerto in F isn’t just a popularwork – it’s also a deeply significant one. For only once before had jazz and classical elements come together so seamlessly in a piece for piano and orchestra: Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” (1924), of course.
With the Concerto in F, Gershwin aspired still higher, hoping to prove that an American musical language could support a multi-movement concerto every bit aswell as European idioms could define works by Chopin and Brahms.
In this recording, Miller and Cole persuade us of this point. Which means they also need to record the other three Gershwin works for piano and orchestra: “Rhapsody in Blue,” “Second Rhapsody” (1932) andVariations on “I Got Rhythm” (1934).
Whoknows what discoveries they’ll make in these milestones of the American piano repertoire?