“Reimagining” Gershwin’s Classic Rhapsody

Cover of the album being discussed

This coming Friday Pentatone will release a new album of centennial significance. George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” was given its first performance in February of 1924; and, one hundred years later, pianist Lara Downes will mark that occasion with her latest album entitled Rhapsody in Blue Reimagined. Currently, the best way to purchase this album is through a Presto Music Web page, which is processing pre-orders for digital downloads. No booklet is included as part of the download. However, the album itself includes a track of useful commentary provided by Downes.

She commissioned Puerto Rican composer Edmar Colón to create a new arrangement of Gershwin’s classic. What made “Rhapsody in Blue” a classic in the first place was the way in which the music provided a vivid perspective of the aspects of urban American life. (Think of the many ways in which Franz Liszt’s Hungarian rhapsodies reflected on lifestyles that were part of his own “roots.”) Those aspects have changed over the course of 100 years, and Colón’s arrangements reflect the changes in urban life with thematic content that interleaves with the themes from Gershwin’s original perspective. Adam Abeshouse, the producer of Rhapsody in Blue Reimagined, summed up the results with one of the oldest saws in the book: “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.”

Nevertheless, I have to confess that my personal reaction to this undertaking has been somewhat mixed. Over the past couple of weeks, I have been working my way through a new Sony box set of the Columbia albums of music by Aaron Copland conducted and/or performed by Copland himself. I was enthusiastic about Copland in my high school days, but that enthusiasm dropped off quickly as I aged.

On the other hand, somewhat ironically, whenever I attend a concert that includes “Rhapsody in Blue,” I go in thinking “Here we go again” and then end up dropping my jaw at the sound of that opening clarinet cadenza! Over the course of a century, the “social context” of “Rhapsody in Blue” has changed. However, the music itself is as a vivid as ever, just as the final choral movement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 125 symphony in D minor continues to get the juices flowing.

Still, I can appreciate the effort that Colón put into his work, just as I can appreciate how conductor Edwin Outwater provided a vivid account of the results leading the SFCM (San Francisco Conservatory of Music) Orchestra. I shall probably revisit this new album, just as I often revisit so many of Downes’ other albums. I do my best to engage both breadth and depth in my listening undertakings!