Rhapsody in Blue, Gershwin/Whiteman

I found an old record of Gershwin performing his Rhapsody in Blue with the Paul Whiteman band - jazz musicians who did the original performance. In this recording, as one might imagine, the piece lives up to the billing as a jazz concerto. In most performances with large symphony orchestras, the piece almost comes off, unfortunately, as a second rate Rachmaninoff imitation. Not here as Gershwin and Whiteman bring the energy of jazz into the equation while not overdoing the sentimentality of the big theme in the middle of the piece. They also play it at a much faster tempo than is usually taken by the symphony orchestras.

There are some cuts in this recording, mostly in the unaccompanied piano solos. The only one I really missed was near the end of the piece. This is by far my favorite recording of the Rhapsody I have heard. A good orchestral version was done by Oscar Levant with Eugene Ormandy conducting. They also play it at a brisk tempo - and I like the percussive playing of Levant.

Handel's Royal Fireworks Music

Just listened to a recording of the Royal Fireworks Music from 1959 in its original scoring - 24 oboes, 12 bassoons, 9 trumpets and 9 horns. I was already familiar with that arrangement having owned a recording of it for many years. But that one was an original instruments recording and while it sounded a bit unusual, it was quite good and didn't need getting used to. The 1959 recording, conducted by Charles Mackerras, was done before the original instruments movement and the modern instruments in this arrangement hit you like a ton of bricks. There wasn't a whole lot of subtlety there but I suppose it was a noble, if failed, experiment. Mackerras would go on to record many wonderful renditions of baroque music, including Handel's, but this wasn't one of them.

By the way, since I made the original post above, I did a google search on the above recording and almost every comment made on it was a rave. "Landmark recording" was the most common description of it. I paid a quarter for it.

I hve listened to this recording a few more times since the original post. It is starting to grow on me. There are a few spots that sound like a modern band recording rather than a baroque orchestra and that throws me off a little.

It has been reissued and available here: http://www.amazon.com/Music-Royal-Fireworks-Cti-Cori/dp/B00006L3X4/ref=sr_1_17?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1250621664&sr=1-17.