Violinist Kristin Lee and pianist Orion Weiss (photograph by Carlin Ma, from the Music@Menlo event page for their recital)
Next month Music@Menlo will join the ranks of performing arts organizations to take their offerings online. Violinist Kristin Lee and pianist Orion Weiss will stream a concert entitled Mutual Admiration – Gershwin and Ravel. I have to confess that this is a hunt in which I have had a dog for some time. Very early in my tenure with Examiner.com, I wrote an article entitled “The Ravel-Gershwin connection,” in which I observed that Maurice Ravel’s 1931 piano concerto in G could be viewed as “a clear homage to Gershwin’s jazzy rhetoric,” having been composed after both “Rhapsody in Blue” (1924) and the 1925 piano concerto called “Concerto in F.” Even Ravel’s decision to call his composition “Concerto in G” may well have been a playful nod to Gershwin, whom he had first met in 1928.
Whether or not such a connection can be found in Ravel’s chamber music is another matter. The Music@Menlo recital will be framed by two Ravel compositions, the second violin sonata in G major, composed between 1923 and 1927, and “Tzigane,” which was composed in 1924. Both of these predate Ravel’s first face-to-face encounter with George Gershwin. On the other hand W. C. Handy was leading a blues band in Paris while Ravel was working on his sonata, and the fact that the second movement is entitled “Blues” suggests that some level of influence was in play. Nevertheless, Gershwin’s take on blues was decidedly different from Handy’s.
“Tzigane,” on the other hand has less to do with Gershwin and more to do with the Hungarian violinist Jelly d'Arányi and the popularity of “gypsy” exoticism, which probably had little, if anything, to do with Roma culture. Ravel reinforced that exoticism by requiring the accompanying piano to include a luthéal attachment, which evoked the sonorities of a Hungarian cimbalom. That is how the music was first performed; but, by the end of the twentieth century, the attachment was no longer being used.
The Gershwin portion of the program has less to do with Ravel and more to do with the violinist Jascha Heifetz. During his career as a recitalist and recording artist for RCA Victor, Heifetz was prolific when it came to augmenting his repertoire with arrangements of music not originally composed for violin and piano. Unfortunately, the anthology of Victor recordings does not give the dates of the arrangements. However, at a studio session that took place on November 28, 1945, Heifetz and his accompanist, Emanuel Bay, recorded Heifetz arrangements of six songs from Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess, which was first performed on September 30, 1935. Arrangements of Gershwin’s three piano preludes were also recorded at that same session.
It would be fair to say that both of these Gershwin selections had less to do with Ravel and more to do with Gershwin’s Tin Pan Alley experiences. The opera setting may not have been the best fit; but the Heifetz arrangements successfully find the right “sweet spot” between pop rhetoric and the more polished sonorities of the violin. Lee will channel Heifetz’ spirit by performing five of the Porgy and Bess songs: “My Man’s Gone Now,” “A Woman is a Sometime Thing,” “Bess, You Is My Woman,” “Summertime,” and “It Ain’t Necessarily So.”
The live stream of Mutual Admiration will begin at 5 p.m. on Sunday, January 17. The price of admission is $25, and tickets may be purchased through the Music@Menlo event page for this program. After the purchase has been approved, ticket buyers will be notified by electronic mail at least 48 hours prior to the concert. That electronic mail will include the hyperlink to the streamed performance and instructions on how to watch. The video will then be archived and available for on-demand viewing beginning one week later on January 24.
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