Editor Reviews:

Amazon.com:
The first of these two discs gathers all Gershwin's commercially issued discs as a pianist, including the two abridged Rhapsody in Blue traversals, Gershwin accompanying the Astaire siblings, and twelve solo sides. Hearing the composer play his own music is like getting your ears cleaned out from 75 years of interpretive maulings. Gershwin's crisp touch, clear-cut and unsentimental phrasing, and rhythmic verve comes through more convincingly in these flat discs than in his much-vaunted piano rolls. Also included are the composer-supervised first recordings of An American in Paris and selections from Porgy & Bess, along with a flawed yet revelatory aircheck of Gershwin playing the finale of his concerto. No Gershwin lover should be without this important collection. --Jed Distler

Rating : - Gershwin plays Gershwin
George Gershwin's best-selling recording was a 1924 acoustical, black seal Victor disc that reproduced the recent world premiere of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue." The Paul Whiteman Orchestra, which actually a big band with a few strings added on occasion, joined the composer in an edited performance that was intended to fill two sides of a single 12-inch 78-rpm disc. By 1924 the acoustical process had been refined to its highest possible standards; already Victor and Columbia were among the companies experimenting with electrical recording and would begin releasing commercial discs the following spring.

Although one is disappointed with the cuts in the familiar "Rhapsody in Blue," what did make it onto the original disc is quite remarkable. It certainly gives the first clear indication of Gershwin's brilliant piano playing. No one would ever play Gershwin's music with more enthusiasm and ability than the composer himself. The Whiteman orchestra plays Ferde Grofe's original arrangement and gives a clear indication of what the February 1924 premiere must have sounded like, even if the sonics are somewhat limited by the acoustical process. Only three years later Victor reunited the same musicians with Gershwin for an electrical recording, using the same cuts.

Gershwin's numerous piano solos, sometimes including his friends Fred and Adele Astaire (who had introduced some of the Gershwin songs in his musical comedies), are amazing. His virtuoso piano playing astonishes us and, for the most part, the sound on these early electrical recordings is quite good. A single microphone was usually placed close to the grand piano, picking up the best possible sound of that time.

The world premiere recording of "An American in Paris" was made in 1929 for RCA Victor, using a hand-picked orchestra that was conducted by Nathaniel Shilkret, Victor's longtime musical director. Gershwin was on hand, supposedly to supervise the recording of the complete score, but he reportedly "got in the way" and was asked to leave the recording studio. Then it was recognized that there was no one on hand to play the celesta solo, so Gershwin was asked to return and play the brief but impressive passage that adds to the magical moments of this innovative score. Also included were the original Paris taxi horns that Gershwin had brought back with him in 1928 for the first performance.

Alexander Smallens conducted Metropolitan Opera stars Helen Jepson and Lawrence Tibbett and a professional orchestra in excerpts from Gershwin's latest musical triumph, "Porgy and Bess." Although the folk opera had not yet achieved its later great success, many recognized the innovations of this score and RCA Victor asked Gershwin to supervise the recording of some of the important songs from his opera in 1935. While some may question the use of white singers to sing in Negro dialect, particularly when the first performances used a mostly black cast, not even the Metropolitan Opera used black singers until 1955 when Marian Anderson made her long-awaited debut in Verdi's "A Masked Ball."

Finally, there is a tantalizing excerpt from the "Concerto in F" in a special arrangement for Rudy Vallee's radio program on NBC. Gershwin occasionally appeared on radio programs, even hosting his own 15-minute show in the early 1930's, and this is one of the few surviving examples of how Gershwin could dazzle both the studio audience and the millions tuning in on their radios. It is a wonderful moment.