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Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue; An American In Paris; Porgy and Bess (symphonic picture)
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| Price: | $7.98 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details |
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Average customer review:
Track Listing
- Rhapsody In Blue
- Cuban Overture
- An American In Paris - Lorin Maazel
- Porgy And Bess - A Symphonic Picture - Antal Dorati
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #139854 in Music
- Released on: 2003-03-11
- Number of discs: 1
Customer Reviews
Perfect Introduction to Gershwin
This budget-priced disc comes into direct competition with a full-priced release by DG with big names James Levine and the Chicago Symphony performing the same program. (Well, Levine plays a different, and to my ears inferior, arrangement of Porgy and Bess tunes.)
How does this one compare? Frankly, it's even better. Everything but Porgy and Bess is performed by Lorin Maazel and the Cleveland Symphony -- not your usual budget-label ensembles, to say the least! I tend to prefer the jazz-band arrangement of the Rhapsody (found in the DG release) as opposed to the full-orchestra arrangement on this disc. However, I have a good friend who considers this Rhapsody to be his favorite performance, so you should probably hear both. (Bernstein's is the most famous recording of the full orchestra version while Tilson Thomas performs and conducts my favorite jazz band version.)
The other works are also quite excellent, particularly the lesser-known Cuban Overture, which fans of Gershwin should definitely hear. The redoubtable Antal Dorati leads the underrated Detroit Symphony in a jubilant Porgy and Bess Suite in a fine early-digital recording, which is only slightly less polished than the late-analog Cleveland recordings.
Good performances, good sound, good deal. It's that simple.
4.5 / 5
Gershwin shines
A cd with both "Rhapsody in Blue" and "An American in Paris", PLUS "Cuban Overtures" and a nice symphonic version of "Porgy and Bess", all that performed by a crowd that even I have heard of (I now practically nothing about classical music - I'm primarily a jazz fan)...
The price is quite low for such a great content; if you're interested in Gershwin, I'm pretty sure you will not regret buying this CD. As is always the case with Gershwin, he can be considered, on one hand, interesting both to classical and to jazz audiences and, on the other hand, too classical for jazz fans and to populist/jazzy for the classical fans...
There's probably no right or wrong attitude here - all I can say is that I'm a jazz fan interested in Gershwin's "symphonic" (or orchestral) work.
