Gershwin: Rhapsody in blue.

Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue 

A CURIOSITY perhaps, but also muchmore than that, is a re-creation of the Rhapsody in Blue with George Gershwin at the piano. Gershwin recorded a piano version in 1925 for piano roll. The engineers plugged up the perforations in the roll that represented the orchestral parts and then dubbed it in against the playing of the Columbia Jazz Orchestra, a CBS studio group. The version of the Rhapsody used is the one that made its debut at Aeolian Hall with Paul Whiteman's Orchestra and Gershwin --superior to the watered-down "symphonic' version that we hear today. As such it is remarkably alive and exciting. In Gershwin's traversal, the dynamics are lost, since piano rolls made no distinction. But we do have the composer's phrasing and interpretation --and this is worth having of a composition that grows in dimension with the passing of time. Interestingly, RCA reissued the old two-side 78-rpm Whiteman-Gershwin disc, enhanced for LP, but I find that something has been lost when compared to the original, which I still have. This new version gives us a more solid sound. And use of the rediscovered original Ferde Grofe scores gives the Rhapsody what it has been losing in, say, a Boston Pops version (CBS's Masterworks).