Customer Reviews

The Authentic George Gershwin, Vol. 1

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have a huge Gershwin collection accumulated over 40 years and know all this music cold. But I've never heard it played better. I think George himself would smile to hear Gibbons. Unlike the perfect--and bloodless--Gershwin renditions of Michael Feinstein, this one truly captures the spirit of the music. It takes the old Gershwin piano roll renditions with their mechanical rhythm and gives them life. Here, you'll hear hundreds of small variations and Gershwinesque riffs you've never heard before, even if you know this music as well as I do.

This CD was released in about 1992 but somehow I'd never run across it. I was interested because Jack Gibbons is a pianist I very much admire, primarily for his superb 2CD recording of the minor key études of Alkan, the kind of music that makes even piano virtuosos have nightmares because of their difficulty. One thing I noted in Gibbons's Alkan release was his loose and easy sense of rhythm. So, thought I, maybe he can do Gershwin the way he was meant to be played. And sure enough, he can and does.

These are mostly recreations from the piano roll elaborations that Gershwin recorded himself. Unfortunately the technology at the time Gershwin made them was fairly primitive and it created a kind of rhythmic strait-jacket for his playing. So what Gibbons has done is play the same notes Gershwin played, but subtly free the rhythms so that they sound spontaneous. And do they!

The CD includes a solo piano version of 'Rhapsody in Blue' based on Gershwin's own two-piano arrangement. Also recorded is the slow movement from the 'Concerto in F.' Both are done beautifully.

There is a dynamite performance of 'I'd Rather Charleston,' a tune hardly remembered today. And then there's Gershwin's own patented version (here perfectly mimicked) of 'Fascinating Rhythm.' And on and on.

This is 67 minutes of sheer joy!

Scott Morrison