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George Gershwin (1898-1937) Rhapsody in Blue & An American in Paris by Leonard Bernstein. 🎧 Qobuz Deezer 🎧 Amazon Music Tidal 🎧 Spotify Youtube Music 🎧 Apple Music — SoundCloud 🎧 Naspter, Pandora, Anghami, LineMusic日本, Awa日本, QQ音乐 … 00:00 An American in Paris (Remastered 2022) Rhapsody in Blue (Orch.: Ferde Grofé) (Remastered 2022) Piano & Conductor: Leonard Bernstein Columbia Symphony Orchestra Recorded in 1958, at New York City New mastering in 2022 by AB for CMRR 🔊 FOLLOW US on SPOTIFY (Profil: CMRR) : 🔊 Download CMRR's recordings in High fidelity audio (QOBUZ) : ❤️ If you like CM//RR content, please consider membership at our Patreon page. Thank you :) Gershwin's father Morris once said of An American in Paris: “It's very important music — it takes 20 minutes to play“ This “important music“ was largely written in Paris and Vienna during Gershwin's extended tour of Europe in 1928 and was also orchestrated by him. He saw this composition as a rhapsodic ballet and considered it his most modern music to date; in it Gershwin was not trying musically to depict any particular scenes but only wished to reflect general impressions. Nevertheless he dropped a few hints as to a slight plot (which the music critic Deems Taylor expanded into a detailed description of a stay in Paris in the program booklet for the first performance): An American is strolling through the city (the introductory Allegretto grazioso is the “promenade theme“ which accompanies him from sight to sight). He hurls himself into the traffic chaos of the big city (four motor horns — at the first performance the genuine article from France! — provide the necessary local color): he hears a popular old favorite (« La Sorella » with forte trombones) in an “establishment,“ abandons himself to nostalgic thoughts of home in a café and “has the blues“ (a muted trumpet playing an appropriate tune Andante ma con ritmo deciso), is cheered UP by a Charleston (Allegro) and once again finds pleasure in the hustle and bustle of Parisian life. An American in Paris was given its first performance in December 13, 1928 by the New York Philharmonic under Walter Damrosch at Carnegie Hall. It was another triumph for Gershwin in spite of mixed reviews and is regarded today, along with the Rhapsody in Blue, as a milestone in the development of an independent American concert repertoire. This recording also represents a critical juncture in the “geography of the New York Philharmonic. Since the late nineteenth century it had been performing principally in Carnegie Hall/ but the players often traveled to other venues for recordings. One of the most impressive was the St. George Hotel in Brooklyn Heights, where the Gershwin pieces on this disc were committed to tape. It was the largest hotel in New York City: by the 1 930s it had grown to comprise 2,632 rooms, a rooftop dance-parlor with sweeping Manhattan views, the “world's largest“ saltwater swimming pool, and a grand ballroom that was well suited to symphonic-scale recording..
