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May 11, 2005
TT: Old friend
I just got back from the New York State Theater, where I saw New York City Ballet dance An American in Paris, Christopher Wheeldon's new George Gershwin ballet. I'll have more to say about it later on, both here and in my Washington Post column, but here's something I want to mention right now: I must have heard An American in Paris at least a hundred times, and it still makes me smile. Premiered in 1928, it remains to this day as fresh as tomorrow morning's dandelions.Not only is An American in Paris an irresistible evocation of Paris in the Twenties, but it's the most fully realized of Gershwin's concert works, a perfect little piece of musical carpentry. No other popular composer, not even Duke Ellington (especially not Ellington, but that's another posting), made the leap into large-scale form with such cool confidence. As Irving Berlin truly said, "George Gershwin is the only song writer I know who became a composer," and this is the piece in which he first brought off the trick. Rhapsody in Blue, composed in 1924, is only slightly better organized than a medley, while the Concerto in F of 1925, though it holds together far better, is still a bit naïve, structurally speaking. Then, three years later, boom! Where on earth did a busy Broadway composer find the time to crack the code of organically developed musical form? Like all acts of genius, it's a mystery, and a miracle.
An American in Paris has been recorded at least as many times as I've heard it, but I'll always have a soft spot for the 1929 premiere recording by Nathaniel Shilkret and the RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra, a no-nonsense, cut-to-the-chase interpretation jauntily played by a smallish band of first-string studio musicians, on which you can hear the actual taxi horns that Gershwin brought back from Paris (as well as a celesta solo played by the composer himself). This fragrant period piece is available as part of Historic Gershwin Recordings, a two-CD set that also includes the very first recording of Rhapsody in Blue, made in 1924 by Gershwin and the Paul Whiteman Orchestra. If you don't have it, get it.
Posted May 11, 2005 12:02 PM
