Boriskin’s Gershwin with Eos Orchestra makes “1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die” List

From 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die: A Listener’s Life List

By Tom Moon

A Spangly Celebration of the Great American Cityscape

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Complete Works for Piano and Orchestra, with Rhapsody in Blue

George Gershwin
Michael Boriskin, Eos Orchestra (Jonathan Sheffer, cond.)

The relentlessly optimistic, Manhattan skyline—evoking Rhapsody in Blue actually exists in several different forms. The original work was commissioned by bandleader Paul Whiteman and intended for a big band. Gershwin composed it in three weeks on an upright piano, and the piece premiered in February 1924 to instant acclaim. success led to a more florid full-orchestra version, scored by Ferde Grofe—this is the one the big symphonies play when they’re trying to woo new subscribers. Grofe also wrote a less sentimental score for a (smaller) theater orchestra, and that’s the one found here, in a 1998 recording. It’s a perfect middle ground—the Whiteman version has its moments of Guy Lombardo-esque runaway schmaltz, and the full orchestra version sometimes hits Gershwin’s skyscraping themes with an anvil. The smaller group gets everything across, with colors far more interesting than those possible with a brassy big band—note the way the French horns. down low, get Gershwin’s slow-to-crest crescendos started. The Eos Orchestra, from New York, is fleet—bringing the animated gestures to life in a way that leaves pianist Michael Boriskin lots of room. Boriskin wisely understates the piece’s familiar declarative themes, and yet his solo passages, particularly the galloping accelerando that erupts shortly after the ten-minute mark on the CD, are executed with a mix of showbiz panache and jazzbo brazenness.