Gershwin, Joan Tower & Steven Stucky: Works for Piano & Orchestra

Album review

The market is not exactly clamoring for a new recording of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, but there are multiple distinctive features to this one, released in 2024 by the student National Orchestral Institute Philharmonic, conductor David Alan Miller, and pianist Kevin Cole. First of all, the three Gershwin works included (the Second Rhapsody and the Cuban Overture frame the Rhapsody in Blue) are all based on a new Gershwin edition issued by the University of Michigan; this gets top billing in the booklet notes and is part of a series from these performers. Gershwin's works, the Rhapsody in Blue above all, tend to exist in multiple forms, so a so-called critical edition is a vexing enterprise. The Rhapsody in Blue version is based on Ferde Grofé's full-size orchestral arrangement, with added material from the jazz band version originally performed by Paul Whiteman's band in 1924. This makes the performance unique, and it will be of great interest to Gershwin fans. The National Orchestral Institute Philharmonic leans into the jazzier elements of the three Gershwin scores, of which the Second Rhapsody, not often played, gets an especially crisp performance. Interesting, too, are the contemporary works by the octogenarian but still extremely sharp Joan Tower and Steven Stucky. Tower's 1920/2019 marks the dates of women's suffrage and the Me Too movement, but one is also struck by how well the piece, with its rhythmic vitality and lyrical second theme, fits with the Rhapsody in Blue. Even Stucky's Dreamwaltzes, though in a more contemporary idiom, does not seem out of place. This is, in short, a completely fresh Gershwin album from young musicians who give one hope for the future of American classical music.

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