6 - Interpretations

Summary

Gershwin's songs live on gloriously as performer's music; his concert works are prisoners of their scores. Numerous attempts to revive the shows that gave birth to the songs have failed. But the songs do not need these period recreations. They have been reborn in the songbook albums of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, or in Charlie Parker's Embraceable You. The Rhapsody, too, has been reinvigorated by the jazz performances of Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington and Marcus Roberts; but the inhibitions of “classical” music limit the possibilities of interpretation. These inhibitions have only increased as the Rhapsody has attained the stature of a concert classic, and with the rise of the notion of “authentic” performance. Today the printed scores, and particularly the “original” version, maintain an unchallenged tyranny. Performers feel obliged to invoke either the letter of the score or the spirit of the age to justify renditions which in fact do not vary all that much. Listeners often feel disappointed no matter what the technical polish or stylistic scholarship of the performers. Their uneasiness springs from the unclassical nature of the work itself. The musical style of the Rhapsody does not come out of the concert hall; it was imported into it from Broadway. Unlike contemporary concertos by Prokofiev, Ravel, Stravinsky or Bartók, none of which feels like period pieces (yet), the Rhapsody cannot be played as written.