Roger Lent’s Sublimity Undermines Gershwin

courtesy of Espressivo

At the beginning of this year, Espressivo, which serves as a classical label of the Jazzheads Music Group, released a solo piano album of the music of George Gershwin. The pianist is Roger Lent, who is based in New York but seems to have made the international circuit of jazz festivals. The title of the album is The Sublime Gershwin, and therein lies the rub.

The album begins with a set of seven preludes, concluding with the three that are frequently performed as a set and were published by New World Music in 1927. Ever interested in making his mark in “serious” music, Gershwin had originally planned to composed 24 preludes for solo piano, honoring the tradition of Frédéric Chopin, who, in turn, had honored the tradition of Johann Sebastian Bach. Only seven were completed in manuscript form before Gershwin’s death, and presumably these are the seven that Lent chose to record.

These are followed by four additional short pieces, the most familiar of which is probably “Promenade,” originally titled “Walking the Dog” when it was used in Shall We Dance, a movie with a scene in which Fred Astaire walks a dog along the deck of a luxury liner. Most fascinating is the “Impromptu in Two Keys,” which has the right hand playing in C major and the left in D-flat major. There are also three short waltzes, the first of which has a blues theme. The album then concludes with the original solo piano version of “Rhapsody in Blue.”

Taken as a whole, the album gets off to an interesting start by establishing a context for those three familiar piano preludes. However, as the tracks progress, they get less and less interesting and hit rock-bottom with Lent’s approach to “Rhapsody in Blue.” The basic problem is that Lent seems to have decided to smooth out any of the sharp edges that Gershwin composed.

Paul Whiteman used to be accused to watering the entire jazz repertoire of his day with such techniques. (Some called him “the man who made a lady out of jazz,” as a compliment, while jazz lovers were more inclined to associate their music with the hooker under a lamppost, rather than a socialite!) Even so Whiteman could bring some qualities of personality to the performances he gave with his band (and, for that matter, with Gershwin).

Lent’s account is so focused on the details of every single note that he has left no room for expressiveness. My first encounter with the solo piano version of “Rhapsody in Blue” came in 2015 when Lara Downes released a concert performance as a single available for download from Amazon.com. Downes delivered an account with just the right balance between technical attentiveness and rhetorical breadth. Lent lacks any sense of rhetoric and sounds as if he can barely get his hands around the marks that Gershwin had committed to paper.