The 100th anniversary of the
Rhapsody in Blue
premiere has produced a flood of new recordings of that masterwork, but this isn't one of them; the
shows up only in a couple of snatches in an opening medley. Instead, what is on offer is a kind of meeting of the minds between musicians from two different worlds, pianist
Jean-Yves Thibaudet
and the versatile
Michael Feinstein
on piano and vocals.
Gershwin
's songs are presented in various arrangements, for piano solo (
Thibaudet
is a fine
pianist), two pianos, or voice and piano. Several times the two musicians present the same song in two different guises, bringing home the fact that
, with only
Bach
and perhaps
Astor Piazzolla
as competition, retains his essence as his music reworked more than any other composer.
Feinstein
is a veteran with an appealing conversational way in the songs, and the varied arrangements by
Tedd Firth
, with some by
himself or
Earl Wild
, keep things constantly shifting. In fact, one of the few possible complaints here is that
himself addressed his songs' malleability in the
George Gershwin Song-Book
, an underrated collection in which he showed how he might have played these songs in performance. At only 47 minutes plus, the album had room for a few of these, and they might have added another layer. As it stands now, however, the album is a unique entry in the 2024
market, nicely recorded at the Colburn School's Zipper Hall in Los Angeles. ~ James Manheim