{"id":2929,"date":"2024-02-14T01:11:33","date_gmt":"2024-02-14T06:11:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=2929"},"modified":"2024-02-14T01:11:35","modified_gmt":"2024-02-14T06:11:35","slug":"the-best-performance-of-the-worst-masterpiece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2024\/02\/the-best-performance-of-the-worst-masterpiece.html","title":{"rendered":"The Best Performance of the Worst Masterpiece?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/00esGqoVLlo?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/div><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Gershwin&#8217;s Rhapsody performed by Alexander Tsfasman and Gennadi Rozhdestvensky<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Now that the centenary of&nbsp;<em>Rhapsody in Blue<\/em>&nbsp;(last Monday) has come and gone \u2013 with fanfare and a degree of controversy and a sampling of many renditions of Gershwin\u2019s \u201cworst masterpiece\u201d \u2013 I am left with a craving to revisit my favorite version: by Alexander Tsfasman and Gennadi Rozhdestvensky. That\u2019s right: a 1960s Soviet studio recording with a Moscow orchestra.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rozhdestvensky was the leading Russian symphonic conductor of his generation. Tsfasman was the Russian pianist most associated with&nbsp;<em>Rhapsody in Blue<\/em>, having toured it throughout the Soviet Union during the interwar decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I would call this recording a supreme validation of Gershwin \u2013 from abroad (of course), where he was not patronized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A product of the Moscow Conservatory, Tsfasman (though closely associated with jazz throughout his career) brings to Gershwin\u2019s piano writing a Romantic keyboard arsenal \u2013 hair-trigger virtuosity; an heroic range of&nbsp;sonority and dynamics \u2013 rarely encountered in this much battered score. Initially denigrated by Lawrence Gilman in the&nbsp;<em>New York<\/em>&nbsp;<em>Herald-Tribune<\/em>&nbsp;for its \u201ctrite and feeble\u201d tunes, the&nbsp;<em>Rhapsody<\/em>&nbsp;was later described by Leonard Bernstein as \u201cnot a composition at all.\u201d&nbsp;<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/01\/26\/arts\/music\/george-gershwin-rhapsody-in-blue.html\">Most recentl<\/a><\/strong>y, in the&nbsp;<em>New York Times<\/em>, it was pegged the \u201cworst masterpiece,\u201d \u201ccorny and na\u00efve.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you care to sample Tsfasman\u2019s Gershwin bear-hug, start with the solo at 8:30 and go to the \u201clove theme,\u201d magnificently prepared and sung, and thence to the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another validation, again from abroad, is last Monday\u2019s&nbsp;<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sounds\/play\/m001w1sl\">45-minute feature<\/a><\/strong>&nbsp;on BBC 3: a tenacious inquiry, by Olivia Giovetti&nbsp;and Nick Taylor, into the American \u201cmelting pot\u201d: what it was \u2013 and was not &#8212; for Gershwin; whether something like it can be captured in music today. The participants are mainly American composers, who volunteer a range of considered responses, including some misgivings.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I contribute my own two cents &#8212; and now find I have this to add: Gershwin&#8217;s pot included Black American music, Cuban music, Jewish music, classical music. He loved it all and didn\u2019t&nbsp;worry about disrespecting anyone. In today\u2019s terms, he was a heedless appropriator. But his curiosity was so great, and his gift so facile, that he could absorb these influences&nbsp;<em>without skimming.<\/em><em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today the range of influences is much greater &#8212; for a start: Asian and African music (as Steve Reich mentions on the BBC show). This may be viewed as an enrichment, but it\u2019s also a risky complication. We have one master practitioner of East\/West fusion who\u2019s deeply versed in a wide-ranging multiplicity of styles &#8212; that\u2019s&nbsp;<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2023\/10\/a-saturday-night-livestream-lou-harrisons-piano-concerto-in-south-dakota.html\">Lou Harrison<\/a><\/strong>. A lot of what&#8217;s produced by American composers today, reflecting on the American experience, seems to me in comparison &#8220;makeshift music&#8221;: a shortcut. Will any of it last?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gershwin, as he rapidly matured, became a student of musical form &#8212; in some respects, the hallmark of Western classical music: organizing time. For instance: considering that\u00a0<em>Porgy and Bess<\/em>\u00a0was Gershwin\u2019s first attempt at something like grand opera, the scene of Robbins&#8217; funeral is a magnificently knit narrative sequence (which cannot be said of the opera as a whole &#8212; Gershwin was still learning). What American composers are today aspiring toward a comparable mastery of long-range musical argument? I worry about this sort of thing. And even more (of course) about the state of the American \u201cmelting pot\u201d generally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The question overhanging BBC-3\u2019s splendid tribute to&nbsp;<em>Rhapsody in Blue<\/em>&nbsp;is: Where are we now?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Indeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Now that the centenary of&nbsp;Rhapsody in Blue&nbsp;(last Monday) has come and gone \u2013 with fanfare and a degree of controversy and a sampling of many renditions of Gershwin\u2019s \u201cworst masterpiece\u201d \u2013 I am left with a craving to revisit my favorite version: by Alexander Tsfasman and Gennadi Rozhdestvensky. That\u2019s right: a 1960s Soviet studio recording [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2929","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-Lf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2929"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2934,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2929\/revisions\/2934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}