Dallas — The opening clarinet squeal at the beginning of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" sets you up to hear the piece like no other opening musical gesture in the repertoire. I have to admit it was a little creepy when the solo piano part started to play with no one seated at it. It was the ghost of George Gershwin himself playing the piano with the Dallas Wind Symphony on Tuesday at the Meyerson Symphony Center, in a program called "A Gershwin Valentine."
Gershwin's apparition was conjured by Zenph Sound Innovations, a North Carolina-based software firm. Their supergeeks started with the famous 1924 recording of the work by Gershwin and the Paul Whiteman Band (who commissioned the piece). They took Gershwin's performance and translated it note by note into code that was then fed to an impressive Yamaha reproducing piano.
Well, not the whole piece, but only nine minutes of it. This is because the two sides of the 78 RPM recording could only hold that amount of time. Guest conductor Jeff Hellmer was able to keep with the invisible George by way of a computer screen that scrolled the score as the technical marvel of a piano played the notes. You can read more about this innovation here.
Gershwin's performance has an improvisatory feel to it, which is probably because most of the piano part was improvised at the premiere and, just a few weeks later, for this recording. Gershwin had forgotten about the commission until just three weeks before it occurred so he didn't have time to write out the piano part that he would be playing himself.
Nevertheless, what he played is what was notated, either before or after he made the recoding, and it is the version we still hear today. The composer takes some liberties as far as tempo goes, with some rushing here and there, even within the phrase. Other times, he relaxes and lets the music trail off reflectively. Some of the performance is much faster than we hear today. Whether this was to squeeze more music onto the time-limited record is unknown, but some modern recordings, such as the one by pianist Ivan Davis, reach for these tempi.
There is no doubt about Gershwin's prodigious gifts as a pianist. His performance, which was recorded in one take without any post-recording editing possible, is amazingly clean. He tosses off even the most difficult riffs in the flashy manner of the best of today's crop of competition-level pianists. Even more impressive was a film clip of Gershwin playing an extremely difficult ragtime-ish stride piano version of "I've got Rhythm." While the strict classical training Gershwin received from his teacher and mentor, Charles Hambitzer, is evident, it is served up with a jazzy sauce he learned as a "song plugger" on Tin Pan Alley.
It was a brave move by Hellmer to sit down at the piano to take over for Gershwin. While it was of interest to hear the difference between Gershwin's smokin' pianism and Hellman's smother modern-day jazz style, it was not a needed extension. George himself should have ended the show.
Hellmer also had a shy at Gershwin's Concerto in F, with Musical Director Jerry Junkin on the podium, with helter-skelter results. His jazz pianist style conflicted with Gershwin serious intentions for the piece. After all, the work was commissioned by Walther Damrosch for a premiere with the New York Symphony Orchestra. Gershwin was writing something quite different than the Rhapsody, but Hellmer treated it the same. One was a jazz piece, but the Concerto was aiming at Beethoven's perch. Another element of the Concerto in F's lofty intention is that Gershwin orchestrated the work himself. The DWS played an arrangement, attributed to Ferde Grofé, which was not nearly as effective.
Although Gershwin supplied the tunes for the remainder of the program, there was little else of the composer's style in evidence. Most were Big Band arrangements, played by a really big band, with the usual screaming brass and wallowing saxophones. Hellmer did double duty as pianist, and less successfully as conductor. These arrangements all sounded pretty much alike, even though they were credited to different arrangers, including Hellmer himself. They were filled with intricate cross rhythms that have to be played with a crispness that was lacking, most probably due to a lack of rehearsal. Thus, they just sounded mushy. One or two less would not have been missed and would have allowed the concert to end at 10 p.m. instead of 20 minutes later.
But the bizarre award has to go to singer Guy Forsyth's version of "Summertime" from Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess. Admittedly, this soprano aria from the opera has freed itself from its original context, come into common usage by all kinds of voices, and is no longer stuck with Gershwin's dictate that only black singers perform his opera. But Forsyth's version, sung with a growl while accompanying himself on the saw (don't ask), will have no challenger in the foreseeable future to earn the title of "unique." He redeemed himself later with a terrific harmonica solo. 
