050 / 2 Lp33 rpm 180 g.

The legacy of analysis, discussion and even controversy that for nearly a century has continued to envelop the music of George Gershwin, with its eclecticism and its amphibious nature, its mixture of classical and jazz, highbrow and lowbrow, is now re-presented and perhaps cleared up once and for all before our very eyes. For now an orchestra that is not merely “classical” but crowned with classical glory, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, one of the oldest orchestras in the world, an orchestra that was conducted by Mendelssohn, Furtwänglers and Bruno Walter, has made a recording of Gershwin played by Stefano Bollani, a pianist with a superb jazz background, and conducted by Riccardo Chailly, at the same time champion twentieth-century composers, a keen explor-er of Mahler’s most acute anxieties and a highly sensitive re-creator of Bach. Many different paths and frontiers intersect at the Gershwin crossroads: a discussion with Chailly and Bollani helps us to gain a better understanding of the rivers or mountain chains along which the lines are drawn, or indeed whether they are wholly imaginary. Gersh-win’s masterpieces and their history are well known and have become emblematic of the “Short Twentieth Century” and American culture. A whole “national” mythology has built up around the Rhapsody in Blue, magnifying its every aspect: its commissioning, partly demon-strative, partly experimental, in 1924 by the dance band leader Paul Whiteman, self-styled “King of Jazz”, for a concert entitled An Experi-ment in Modern Music; the breakneck process of composing the work, roughed out on a train to Boston («It was on the train, with its steely rhythms, its rattlety-bang that is often so stimulating to a composer […] And there I suddenly heard, and even saw on paper, the complete con-struction of the Rhapsody, from beginning to end») and finished in a two-piano arrangement in a few short weeks; the first performance, in the setting of an epideictic contrast of jazz and highbrow music, which proceeded from the “True Form of Jazz” to the “Semi-Symphonic Ar-rangement of Popular Melodies” (works by Berlin) and ended up “In the Field of Classics” with Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1; the explosive success of the premiere at the Aeolian Hall in New York on 12 February in the version for piano and jazz band arranged by Ferde Grofé (the version that Chailly offers here), to an audience that included composers such as Bloch, Rachmaninov and Sousa, conduc-tors such as Stokowski and Mengelberg, the violinists Jascha Heifetz and Fritz Kreisler, the tenor John McCormack and the pianist Leopold Godowsky; the famous story about Ross Gorman, the first musician to play the clarinet part, who at the dress rehearsal jokingly impro-vised a glissando for the opening scale and thus unwittingly created an icon that became the unmistakable hallmark of the Rhapsody and of a whole era and a style; and the feeling of identification that the work set out to express, as Gershwin himself wrote: «I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our blues, our metropolitan madness.» However, we also know of Gershwin’s ambition (shared by the man who commissioned it, Walter Damrosch), after the tremendous success that greeted the Rhapsody, to compose a “real” Concerto; and we know the effort that Gershwin lavished on its writing and orchestr tion, the young, very rich “American in Paris” asking for composition lessons from all the great figures of the European school, including Schönberg (who admired him), Ravel (who also took some ideas from him) and Glazunov (who disdainfully refused). A mixture compounded of the pride produced by a new, exhilarating identity and an anxious search for consensus on a more classical front led to a series of stimulating, sparkling compositions: the Concerto in F, which had its first perfor-mance at Carnegie Hall on 3 December 1925, with Damrosch on the podium conducting the New York Symphony Orchestra; the Catfish Row suite (1936), which includes big numbers and rarer passages from Porgy and Bess: the Introduction, “Jazzbo Brown’s Piano Blues” and the song “Summertime”, ecstatically conveyed by the violin in the first part (“Catfish Row”); “I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’”, with its bouncy banjo, and “Bess, You Is My Woman Now” in Porgy Sings; the Fugue from Act III (the killing of Crown); the fury of Hurricane; and the Finale with the song “Oh, Lawd, I’m on My Way” in “Good Mornin’ Sistuh!”. And Rialto Ripples (1916), in which “Rialto” stands for Broadway, brings us back to the beginning: the first “finished” composition by the then 18- year-old Gershwin, a rag in rondo form, alternating A minor and F major. We are, in fact, covering a very wide range with regard to time and, particularly, style. From ragtime to symphonic concerto, from jazz to opera, from blues to fugue. One form leads to another by a process of contamination and stratification. «For me,» Chailly says: «the Concerto in F is a work comparable to Stravinsky in terms of greatness and diffi-culty.» Why Stravinsky? «It has a neoclassical form. And my particular

aim is to restore the Concerto to that neoclassical structure. I feel that Gershwin is close to the genius of Stravinsky, because of the timbres in the orchestration and because of the constant search for a different rhythmic world. With Stefano Bollani we have tried to get much closer to that strictness of form than in the usual performing tradition. For the listener, where is that “strictness” mainly to be found? «In Gershwin there is a continual loosening of the basic tempo, with the danger of an undulating movement. The ornamentation and the flexibility of the beat have to be kept in mind, but there’s a need to preserve a sense of rubato, respecting a Haupttakt, a basic underlying beat. You can “distort” with-in the bar, but the blues relentlessly perpetuates its beat: we have tried to restrain the exuberance of “extremes”, as far as freedom is concerned, in the first movement and even more in the second (a leisurely Aprèsmi-di …), preserving the beat of the blues. The Finale is almost all in the same relentless tempo, what I would call a “choppy” pace. The idea is to get to the last page, with the trills on the trumpets and the brass, as if the music is a cry that physically takes hold of someone who can no longer resist the excitement of the furious moto perpetuo.» «If there is one thing that can be said about our Concerto in F,» Bollani adds: «it is that it’s a tempo: it doesn’t indulge in melancholy, it’s like a dance sequence with Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire, for whom Gershwin did, in fact, write.» But what about the sense of swing? How is it reconciled with the strictness of the form? «In America – Chailly says – the musi-cians ask: «How do you want it, swing or straight?” In the Catfish Row suite, for example, all the swung rhythms that we recorded don’t cor-respond exactly to what’s written but to the longestablished, typically American performance tradition: a rhythmic swing, a magical sense of souplesse, the irrational impossibility of identifying how the rhythm is written because it comes from a style that is “action” that goes beyond written music.» Where is the point of balance between jazz influences and classical ambitions in Gershwin?«What Gershwin originally wanted was to import the jazz language of the twenties into the classical repertoire while retaining an idea of fresh-ness, artlessness and immediate poetry.» Chailly continues: «My inter-pretation has a direct bearing on the kind of sound that is required, and the members of the Gewandhaus orchestra responded to this immedi-ately, showing great stylistic awareness and precision. Starting with the opening clarinet glissando in Rhapsody in Blue, one sometimes senses that Gershwin has been overexposed. But the Gewandhaus preserves the composer’s spontaneity, which is where his greatness lies. There’s no need to give in to the temptation of constantly trying to be origi-nal; the score is so well written that it’s valid as it is. Gershwin is one of the composers who have suffered most from performance excesses, like Puccini and Rachmaninov, who were also his contemporaries: they have suffered from a mistaken attitude on the part of performers who plunge overconfidently into performance extremes that the composers themselves considered inappropriate.» Bollani agrees: «With time, Ger-shwin has become more “grand” than he was originally, his music has been given a more classical rendering. He has ended up by becoming a Romantic. But he’s not a Romantic, he’s not Brahms, who wants to dig down into you and make you writhe in every bar … In order to consider Gershwin a great composer it isn’t necessary to make a desperate search in his music for forced classical origins or the improvisatory freedom of jazz.» But in what has been written about Gershwin there has been a constant attempt to unearth and identify highbrow sources and influ-ences, from Grieg onwards. «Gershwin wasn’t brought up on Grieg’s music.» Bollani exclaims: «At most he may have tried listening to him. His proud ambition was to write the first American concerto in history, but I don’t hear Grieg or Mozart in him. Rachmaninov, perhaps, but understood as a model of success. I see Gershwin as being very “boy-ish”, driven by “inspiration”; in him I hear the simplicity of the real America.» Is this “national” music? «Gershwin’s music – Chailly says – comes from the profoundly American world of Broadway. He was born in that environment and it was his first musical culture. Then all the genius that he had inside him burst out so that he has now become not just a classic of American culture but also one of the great figures of the twentieth century. I think there is a more American inspiration in the melodies that Dvorák included in the New World Symphony than in the products of Gershwin’s imagination.» Does that also apply to Porgy and Bess? «The Catfish Row suite also includes a “Fugue” in which we can glimpse fragments reminiscent of Stravinsky’s Agon. In it he breaks away completely from the “romantic” velvety quality of the Gershwin sound and plunges into a very complicated rhythmic forest. He has to demonstrate that he is a master of counterpoint. At that point, too, the quality of the rhythm and timbre reminds me of late Stravinsky, though

without having the same harmonic boldness.» Your rendering of “Sum-mertime” there is very poetic. “It’s a simple but pleasing song played by the solo violin. I kept to a tempo of 72 quarter notes per minute, which seems to be what Gershwin wanted in the original manuscript, relaxed and never pretentious.” But how much of the genuine jazz element still remains in this music? «What we have recorded is an interesting se-lection: we perform the jazz band version of the Rhapsody, the one arranged by Grofé in 1924, a very curious version in terms of timbre, with an even stronger jazz brilliancy than in the symphonic version. In contrast to what Gershwin does in theConcerto in F, it is a demonstration of absolute independence in the composition and realisation of an amazing score, not only in the control of rhythm but in the richness of the dynamics. If you make a profound analysis of it, the score is full of Nebenstimmen, secondary voices that intersect with the main line: it’s extraordinarily interesting.» And from the viewpoint of the jazz musician? Bollani’s answer is unequivocal: «Gershwin didn’t want to “dress up” jazz, as some contemporary com-posers in Europe did. He liked jazz. If he liked it, why dress it up? I think the jazz element is present in a great variety of situations. Rather than create “symphonic jazz”, as described in the publicity devised by Paul Whiteman, Gershwin wanted to make music that was one hundred per cent “American”, which was even more ambitious.» A jazz pianist with a classical orchestra playing music by a “borderland” composer: how did the relationship work? «Riccardo is also an ex-drummer, which helped a lot.» Bollani continues: «When I play with an orchestra, my problem is the vocabulary. I don’t mean musical vocabulary. I mean the way you talk about music and the way you feel it in a classical orchestra. Let me give just one very simple example: when the conduc-tor drops his arm, I come in. With a symphonic orchestra it doesn’t work like that: the gesture precedes the action, there’s a lapse of time between gesture and action. The conductor of a jazz band dances the music, the orchestra plays “in response to” the gesture. Riccardo was very patient.» Jazz is improvisation. How much room was there for improvisation here? «In the Concerto I don’t improvise at all.» Bollani says: «I do so in the rag and in some parts of the Rhapsody, simply because I know that Gershwin did so at the premiere, as he hadn’t had time to orchestrate it or even set down the entire piano part. So I took the liberty of improvising a few variations on the theme. The Rhapsody is basically a series of great themes running around after each other for a quarter of an hour. And you can play with those themes. I don’t want to “drag”Gershwin over to the jazz side at all costs. But I do want to give him a light-hearted nudge.» «At the end of Rialto Ripples, – says Chailly jokingly – exhilarating music, very much in the style of Scott Joplin, that Gershwin wrote when he was 18. You hear Bollani play a free introduction, and there are two other passages by him, as variations on the theme. Then we end with a final whoop from three slide whistles, as if to say: “Did you really think we were serious?” The sound of the whistles rises and falls and I say “Aufwiedersehn!” to the orchestra: but Stefano remains there on his own and plays the Rialto theme in a modu-lated version, concluding with other variations: “Stefano, I’m going.” I say. And he replies: “See you, Riccardo. And order some linguine for me too, will you?»

Gian Mario BenzingTranslated by Karel Clapshaw

Rhapsody in Blue (Jazz Band Version)(George Gershwin) Ferde Grofé’s orchestration for the Paul Whiteman Orchestra © New World Music Company Ltd. All rights on behalf of New World Music Company Ltd. Administred by Wb Music Corp.Catfish Row, Symphonic Suite in five parts(George Gershwin) (from the opera “Porgy and Bess” by George Gershwin, Du Bose and Dorothy Heyward, and Ira Gershwin)Edited by Steven D. Bowen © Chappell & Co., Inc.Concerto in F for Piano and Orchestra(George Gershwin) Edited by F. Campbell-Watson © New World Music Company Ltd. All rights on behalf of New World Music Company Ltd.Administred by Wb Music Corp.Rialto Ripples(George Gershwin) Written in collaboration with Will DonaldsonArranged by William Ryden © Edwin F. Kalmus & Co. Inc.

DISC 1

George Gershwin(1898-1937)

DISC 1 - SIDE ARHAPSODY IN BLUE* - 16.12( Jazz Band Version - Orchestration by Ferde Grofé)

DISC 1 - SIDE BCATFISH ROW - SYMPHONIC SUITE(Edited by Steven D. Bowen)

CATFISH ROW - 6.18PORGY SINGS - 4.37FUGUE - 1.51HURRICANE - 3.39

DISC 2 - SIDE AGOOD MORNIN’ SISTUH! - 7.18CONCERTO IN F FOR PIANO AND ORCHESTRA*(Edited by F. Campbell-Watson)

ALLEGRO - 12.16

DISC 2 - SIDE BADAGIO - ANDANTE CON MOTO - 10.16ALLEGRO AGITATO - 6.29RIALTO RIPPLES* - 4.35( Written in collaboration with Will Donaldson Arranged by William Ryden)

Stefano Bollani, PIANO*Riccardo ChaillyGEWANDHAUSORCHESTER

050 / 2 Lp

Universal Classics & Jazz, a division of Universal Music Italia s.r.l.Photos: Gert Mothes/UniversalArtwork: Punto e Virgola, Bologna (Italy)www.universalmusic.it/classica

Recording Producer: Andrew CornallRecording Engineer: Philip SineyAssistant Engineers: Eike Boehm, Thomas Haendel, Ian WatsonRecording Editors: Ian Watson, Jenni WhitesideLive Recording: Gewandhaus zu Leipzig, 28, 29 & 30 January 2010 Executive Producer: Mirko Gratton

La masterizzazione è stata effettuata da Giulio Cesare Ricci utilizzando il sistema Signoricci interamente analogico e valvolare. Il Master è stato registrato con l’Ampex ATR 102 2 tracce 1/2 pollice 76 cm/sec modificato da David Manley

Su licenza Universal Music Italia s.r.l.

Printed in Germany

Signoricci Vinyl33 rpm - Pure Analogue Cutting

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Limited Edition 496 copies

P 2010 Universal Music Italia s.r.l.

C 2012 Audiophile Productions s.r.l.

DISC 2