Hello MMD readers,  "Weekend Edition", a Saturday/Sunday news and
information program on National Public Radio, featured the story
behind Rhapsody in Blue on today's broadcast: 2-13-2000.

Here's the original announcement, according to NPR's program notes:

  Rhapsody in Blue: As part of our series on NPR's most important
  musical works of the 20th Century, reporter Jeff Lunden tells the
  story of George Gershwin's masterpiece Rhapsody in Blue.  Gershwin
  was only 25 years old and took only three weeks to compose one of
  the most enduring pieces of American music.   14:18

There was more accurate information in today's 14 minute broadcast,
listed above, than any of the prior NPR Gershwin programs.  We, the
listeners, heard the voices of Ira Gershwin, Paul Whiteman, Michael
Tilson Thomas, biographer Ed Jablonski and other knowledgeable people,
concerning the background and debut of this American musical
masterpiece.

It was refreshing to hear the acoustic Victor Record of Rhapsody in
Blue in the background, that playful and effervescent "jazz band and
piano" arrangement which preceded the overblown "symphonic orchestra
with piano" remake involving the composer and conductor Nathaniel
Shilkret (originally billed as 'Paul Whiteman' on the early Orthophonic
78s by Victor!).  Moreover, the NPR segment also described the earlier
jazz-opera Blue Monday with a vocalist singing Blue Monday Blues in
the background.

What was so wonderful about this particular Gershwin segment was the
absence of a MIDI solenoid player (the Disklavier) and a self-styled
"Gershwin scholar" to confuse everything with revisionist statements
about the composer, usually including a litany of alleged limitations
about the pneumatic Pianola.  After all, it took halves of two
Disklaviers on a recent audio recording to present An American in
Paris, something which one Ampico or one Duo-Art or one standard
Player-Piano could perform with ease!  (During some of the publicity
about the double-Disklavier 'music roll' transfer recording, it was
advertised as a "two piano" performance when only partial instruments
were in use.  Talk about limitations, and they are in the modern
electronic player designs!)

While the cost of the audio tape for today's program is $23.70 --
an entire hour of playing time -- it will include the 14-minute
segment described above, so might appeal to hard-core Gershwin
enthusiasts who like their history presented correctly.  See
http://www.npr.org/inside/transcripts/

As for me, I'm glad that NPR decided to leave the questionable "played
by Gershwin" rolls out of the broadcast, along with MIDI versions of
them along and the muddy-sounding modern solenoid player performances.

To my knowledge, Masanobu Ikemiya, and his New York Ragtime Orchestra
(which travels world-wide), is the only live performance group which
equals, if not surpasses, that acoustic Victor Record with Gershwin and
Paul Whiteman's Orchestra.  (His CD of Rhapsody in Blue, recorded by
BMG of Japan, doesn't completely satisfy, for the piano sounds as if
it's in another room while the small "jazz band" is on front stage.)

What's interesting about this new series of Gershwin performances is
that Masanobu studied my copy of the Aeolian Hall 'Primo Demonstration
Roll', a Tempo 100 extravaganza which has no similarity to the later
commercial Duo-Art rolls (starting at Tempo 60) which were sold to the
public.  Masanobu's expertise with the Gershwin music, along with a
synthesis of the undocumented Demonstration Roll and a tape of the
acoustic Victor Record, created a new and authentic-sounding Rhapsody
in Blue arrangement which brings modern audiences to a standing ovation
wherever it is performed.

Meanwhile, NPR treated our ears with snippets of "original Gershwin"
on audio, and not the latter-day "recycled Gershwin" so often heard
in the media.

Regards from Maine,

Douglas Henderson, Artcraft Music Rolls
Wiscasset, ME 04578
http://www.wiscasset.net/artcraft/