Benjamin Grosvenor: Rhapsody in Blue

Benjamin Grosvenor: Rhapsody in Blue

• Decca presents Benjamin Grosvenor's recording with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra

The three principal works that Benjamin Grosvenor has chosen for his first concerto album complement each<br>other perfectly. The urbane charm and dazzling virtuosity of Saint-Saens lead naturally on to the brittle brilliance<br>and dry wit of his fellow Frenchman Ravel. Ravels distinctly jazzy G major Concerto was written soon after hed<br>met Gershwin, and just a few years after the great Broadway songsmith had so spectacularly gatecrashed his<br>way into the classical world with his syncopated, note-bending Rhapsody in Blue.<br><br>Rhapsody in Blue needs neither verbal advocacy nor apology from me, says Benjamin Grosvenor. It s simply<br>a work of rapturous inventiveness a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, as Gershwin himself called<br>it. <br><br>In his new recording, Benjamin Grosvenor puts aside the large and less wieldy symphonic version in favour<br>of the original jazz-band arrangement that Ferde Grofe made for the works 1924 premiere, given by Gershwin<br>himself with the Paul Whiteman Band. Its a more intimate version, says Grosvenor, very colourful and<br>extremely interesting it even includes a banjo, which adds a unique sound.<br><br>As for the two French concertos, theyre very much part of a personal crusade: Ive often felt that the French piano repertoire is underrated or that its judged as no more than opulent mood-music or pictures in sound, but I ve adored the Ravel and Saint-Saens concertos from the first time I heard them.<br><br>The CD also features Benjamin Grosvenor playing three solo encores, one from each composer represented.<br>For Saint-Saens, hes chosen Leopold Godowskys deliciously free transcription of The Swan, the famous<br>cello solo from The Carnival of the Animals. Ravel is represented by a brief Prelude that he wrote in 1913 as<br>a sight-reading test for students at the Paris Conservatoire. And, to end the CD, there s Gershwins immortal<br>song Love Walked In in a piano transcription by his friend, the eccentric and eclectic Australian-born<br>pianist composer Percy Grainger, who created it specifically to serve as an encore for his own performances of<br>Gershwins Piano Concerto and Rhapsody in Blue.