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Here are red hot performances of the four Gershwin classics for piano and orchestra. Anne-Marie McDermott's pianism is both subtle and explosive, and British conductor Justin Brown leads performances that have the bracing vitality of the Paul Whiteman originals without sacrificing the lush sound of the full orchestral versions. Recorded in Dallas's superb Meyerson Hall by Grammy-winning Producer/Engineer Adam Abeshouse.
All of Gershwin's works for piano and orchestra are on one disc here, and though no one pianist is going to connect with these pieces equally well, the consistency level is very high - for listeners who like performances that favor the classical sides of these hybrids. Though Rhapsody in Blue is often heard in the original jazz-band orchestration these days, Anne-Marie McDermott's is symphonic indeed, and the opposite of Gershwin's own performances, which were all about jazzy animal instincts and letting the details take care of themselves (or not).
McDermott finds little worlds of meaning in every phrase, and though you occasionally wish she'd tarry slightly less (particularly when opening up often-cut passages), the performance is a smart, thorough reimagining of a piece that might seem too familiar to yield anything new.
That quality is found with equally dapper effect in the Concerto in F, though her connection with the more problematic Second Rhapsody pales in comparison to Michael Tilson Thomas' Sony-label outing with the piece. Conductor Brown has almost as many ideas about how it should go as McDermott, and the combination of the fine Dallas orchestra and recording acoustic make this release one of the best all-Gershwin discs out there.
— David Patrick Stearns
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