Search - Gershwin :: Rhapsody in Blue; Cto in F; Three Preludes

Krieger plays Gershwin: Solo Transcriptions, Preludes: A Sle

Dan Fee | Berkeley, CA USA | 01/09/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"USA pianist Norman Krieger is appearing now around the catalog edges. His pedigree is a high one. He was a student of Adele Marcus at New York's Juilliard School. Then he also studied with Maria Curcio and Alfred Brendel in London. And he wrapped up by coaching with Russell Sherman at the New England Conservatory in Boston. He has won awards and prizes, including topping out at the first ever Palm Beach International Competition in 1987. He now sits on the faculty of the music school at University of Southern California.



This disc offers us something slightly old-fashioned. Krieger is playing two solo piano transcriptions, one each of the Gershwin Piano Concerto in F, and Rhapsody in Blue. He also gives us the original solo versions of the three piano preludes. Gershwin himself did an original transcription of the rhapsody, so popular did the work become. Grace Castagnetta did a transcription of the concerto in 1946, for Gershwin's publisher, Harms, and played it in public for the first time at her NY recital at Town Hall, that same year. Her name is probably not familiar to most of us, though in her hey day she was noted for her forceful musical playing, especially her improvisations. The moment Gershwin's publisher heard her on a radio broadcast, the powers that be immediately switched the commissioning of the solo concerto transcription from Percy Grainger to GC. As part of her process, Castagnetta consulted the original rhapsody transcription closely, and tried to emphasize the keyboard's sound world, instead of trying to imitate or recall the original concerto orchestration.



The disc begins with the concerto transcription, passes on to each of the three solo piano preludes, and then concludes with Gershwin's original solo Rhapsody in Blue transcription. Krieger is playing a Hamburg Steinway D, and the improved sound shows, compared to some of his other recordings. The disc was recorded in NY's RCA Studios, August, 1987.



Krieger is a very strong player with a virtuoso technique, yet his concerns constantly go far deeper than technical display. One of his strong points is his omnipresent attention to harmony, and to musical structure permeated by and involved with harmony. All the Gershwin played here is uncommonly cogent, solid, all of a piece. Yes Gershwin was crossing over from Tin Pan Alley to mainstream western classical music traditions in the early past century. (Think of Heitor Villa-Lobos? Milhaud? Ravel? Copland?) No, Gershwin was not aiming for an easy musical fix. His music is way more than a dollop of cross-over fame that lasts for increments of a few media minutes at a time, slipped in between infomercials and ultimate fighting match TV teasers.



So, Krieger has the wherewithal to just get out of the way and let Gershwin drive right through the wide manicured front lawns, arriving in full bon vivant hoopla, right on time at the front portico steps. All the jazz we have come to expect from the composer is vivid and up front; but so, too, are all the rock solid harmonic structures that other swooning performances of Gershwin tend to obscure. In Krieger's capable hands, the deep musical logic of Gershwin's underlying musical message is coherent and quite compelling. Suddenly a listener has to reach all the way back to Mozart to find a suitable comparison for Gershwin's abilities to use folk or pop materials without in the least compromising his musical arts. Krieger's Gershwin is one hell of a cool customer, then. As smart as they come. Really as well-read, thoughtful, and full of new century pep as anybody that might be invited by Alice B. Toklas to drop in on Gertrude Stein, some evening soon.



The fact that this disc is so fine also condemns it for now, to a serious sleeper category of available recordings. Suddenly one wants to get Krieger get right back into the RCA NY Studios, playing that Hamburg Steinway D, to hear what he can do with other composers. (That studio and that Steinway yield the best recorded keyboard sound we have so far gotten from Krieger's recordings. Really a palpable step forward.) Yes I would dearly love to hear his Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Schubert, and Schumann. But I also have a nag from a back corner of my mind, that Krieger could conjure a wonderful and terrible piano musical magic with, say, French Creole composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk. Then that sudden notion opens me up to thinking about Bartok, of all things.



Get this little sleeper disc every time it pops up. For yourself, for everybody else on your seasonal and family-friends gift lists. No Gershwin fan will be disappointed. No fan of exceptional piano playing will be let down, either. Five Gershwin-esque, after the party winds down, just us aficionados alone with George and cigars and barrel-aged cognac, early A.M. Stars, stars."