Classical Works:
Gershwin Song-Book, song transcriptions (18) for piano
- Date: 1932
- Main Performer: George Gershwin
- Genre: Keyboard
- Period: Modern (1870-)
Review
"Playing my songs as frequently as I do at private parties," Gershwin noted, "I have naturally been led to compose numerous variations upon them, and to indulge the desire for complication and variety that every composer feels when he manipulates the same material over and over again." By 1932, when his publisher suggested a collection in his distinctive keyboard style, Gershwin could look back over a meteoric career and an impressive body of work. Indeed, only Porgy and Bess, a handful of musicals (including the superb Let 'Em Eat Cake), and the "I Got Rhythm" Variations remained for him to compose before a brain tumor cut his life short on July 11, 1937. The album of 18 transcriptions with which he fulfilled his commission, however, are quite different in style from the few recordings he left of his improvisations. The Song Book versions are fresh compositions, most very brief -- a mere two pages -- but scintillant, suggestive, and witty. Double that length, "I Got Rhythm" looks forward to the "I Got Rhythm" Variations for piano and orchestra (1934), while "Liza" (to be played "Languidly") is spaciously developed. All are deft, polished, and rife with Gershwin's peculiar exuberance and inexhaustible invention. They are, moreover, of considerable historical interest. Gershwin, who rejected a "ghosted" introduction to write his own, notes that "The evolution of our popular pianistic style really began with the introduction of ragtime, just before the Spanish-American war, and came to its culmination point in the jazz era that followed upon the Great War. A number of names come crowding into my memory; Mike Bernard, Les Copeland, Melville Ellis, Lucky Roberts, Zez Confrey, Arden and Ohman, and others. Each of these was responsible for the popularization of a new technique....To all of these predecessors I am indebted; some of the effects I use in my transcriptions derive from their style of playing the piano."Gershwin is explicit, too, about touch. "Our study of the great romantic composers has trained us in the method of the legato, whereas our popular music asks for staccato effects, for almost a stencilled style. The rhythms of American popular music are more or less brittle; they should be made to snap, and at times to crackle." The songs he chose, however, show at least as much winsome croon -- for instance, the ben cantando left-hand melody in "Do It Again" (to be played "Plaintively") -- as crackle. The numbers also include his first hit, "Swanee," "Somebody Love Me," "The Man I Love," "Nobody but You," "I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise," "Lady Be Good," "Somebody Loves Me," "Sweet and Low Down," "Clap Yo' Hands," "Do Do," "My One and Only," "S'Wonderful," "That Certain Feeling," "Who Cares?," and "Strike Up the Band!"
Issued by Simon and Schuster in September 1932, the original edition featured the sheet music vocals followed by their transcriptions. And a special edition limited to 300 signed copies included a party song of broad ethnic humor, "Mischa, Yascha, Toscha, Sascha." ~ All Music Guide
