Gershwin Rhapsody

February 2024 marked the centenary of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, a piece that combines classical rigour with the freedoms of jazz rhythm and harmony. It changed the landscape forever. But how to mark its centenary? After all, there are hundreds of recordings of the Rhapsody, either in its fully orchestrated scoring or in its original version with jazz band. French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet has done both over the years. It was time, then, for something different. In March 2023, Thibaudet and composer, pianist and singer Michael Feinstein started touring the US with their show Two Pianos: Who Could Ask for Anything More? which included an uninterrupted hour-long medley of the American composer’s greatest hits and lesser-known discoveries. “I thought, ‘My God, this is perfect!’,” Thibaudet tells Apple Music Classical. “It was something new, something different and something fascinating because of the encounter of two brains, two different approaches between Michael and me.” The medley then became the basis for Gershwin Rhapsody. It's an ingenious piece of musical wizardry, each song or extract arranged and stitched seamlessly together by Tedd (Theodore) Firth. Gershwin Rhapsody begins with Firth’s arrangement for two pianos of the opening of Rhapsody in Blue before dissolving into an exquisite, virtuosic solo piano fantasy on “Someone to Watch Over Me” followed by the same song, but this time with Feinstein on vocals. And so it continues, with Thibaudet’s extraordinary pianism, plenty of two-piano fireworks and so much tenderness. “Gershwin was just a complete genius and was so versatile,” says Thibaudet. “It’s impossible to classify him. People couldn’t understand how he could write a concerto, be on Broadway, and then write an opera. The melodies that he produced in his short life [he died aged 38] are just staggering, and his music makes me smile, makes me happy, makes me feel good.” Crucially, Firth plays to each musician’s strengths, giving Thibaudet a chance to shine as one of today’s finest concert pianists, but equally brings in Feinstein both as pianist and singer, whose golden voice adds so much expressivity and intimacy. “It’s masterful how Theodore put everything together in a way that’s so organic, that just flows,” says Thibaudet. Without doubt, Feinstein and Thibaudet are equally fine musicians, but in quite different ways. Thibaudet understands jazz idiom, having spent time in his youth at Paris jazz clubs. But at heart he is a classical musician, trained at the Paris and Lyon conservatoires, and a constant solo presence on the great stages throughout the world. Feinstein, meanwhile, is a musicals man through and through, a former assistant to Gershwin’s young brother Ira and a world authority on the Great American Songbook (a generally agreed collection of great 20th-century American songs and jazz standards). As a performer, he sings and plays, often at the same time. Thibaudet and Feinstein, however, feed artistically off one another. “I learned so much from Michael,” says Thibaudet. “It’s just incredible how much he knows about Gershwin, about the entire era, about the Great American Songbook. And his improvisation skills are at a level that I can’t even describe. I would give anything for that.” Gershwin Rhapsody finishes with a run of premiere performances of songs that have long been gathering dust: “Graceful and Elegant”, “Dance of the Waves”, “Sutton Place” and “Under the Cinnamon Tree”. “They’re so sweet, and I think people will love listening to them,” says Thibaudet. “Gershwin wrote so many things that we don’t even know—and in such a short life. God knows what he could have produced.”