Percy Grainger's hair-raising Fantasy on songs from Geroge Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess. Live performance by two absolutely amazing pianists, Marc-André Hamelin and Piers Lane.
0:04 Beginning of the second act 0:17 Overture of the first act 0:53 My Man’s Gone Now 3:42 It Ain’t Necessarily So 5:32 Beginning of the third act (chorus) 7:18 Strawberry Woman 8:40 Summertime 11:07 Oh, I Can’t Sit Down 13:08 Bess, You Is My Woman Now 15:57 Oh, I Got Plenty O’ Nuttin’ 17:00 Ending
George Gershwin was a genius - no doubt about it - and Hamelin and Lane are genii - what a marvellous interpretation of this masterpiece.It makes one wonder what other masterpieces would have been composed by this master musician if he had not died so early in life because of a brain tumour at only 39 years of age. Devastating for him and those who love his music.
It sounds great. I think Grainger missed an opportunity, though, where Gershwin brings in all the themes from earlier at the finale, and all Grainger does is put in arpeggios against the vocal melody. Wild, in his fantasy on the opera, hints at the themes. Jack Gibbons shows that one player can handle all the themes, and his solo arrangement of Catfish Row is outstanding. I really like that Grainger included the strawberry song - there's his ear for folk music!
A brilliant performance...I saw the show a few weeks ago. At times, there was a certain touch and rhythmic feel on the pianos that made me hear the actual vocalists in my head...no easy feat on a percussion instrument!
Considering all the genius on display in this recording my comment might seem odd but... Did anyone else notice how good the two pianos sound? The tuning was darned near identical and the voicing was wonderful!
I am a piano technician and can confirm that it is almost impossible to tune two pianos perfectly AND to each other. Usually what happens for duets is that one piano is tuned to be harmonious with itself, and the other is tuned as a 'slave' where all of its pitches are matched from the primary piano. That keeps unions in sync, but the secondary piano is usually not harmonically tuned with itself because all pianos resonate with slightly different profiles. For a tuning like this to happen, though, the instruments would have to be nearly identical and kept in the same conditions, bought at the same time, and maintained at the same interval. Otherwise, the harmonics would not match up. It is hard enough to keep one instrument tuned with itself, let alone two!
I performed this work with a friend some 20 years ago. It is tremendous fun to play. The genius of the work is incredible. I still hear it in my mind. It's time to do it again! sanjosemike
Genius, the best opera in my opinion. G. Gershwin mastered piano, voice and orchestra writing and he is not well known enough for what he achieved during his short life.
Just finished listening to Hamelin playing Liebermann's Nocturne No. 8 - the music and playing absolutely drew me into it. Then I watched this video and it's like entering a different world, much more superficial or artificial than the one I was in - quite a jolt.
I notice a lot of the comments under this video, and similar videos elsewhere, go out of their way to praise Grainger more than Gershwin. This leads me to wonder if people realise that Grainger has, for most part, simply copied Gershwin's own piano score, with occasional doubling of parts. In other words, most of the time what we are listening is not only Gershwin's music, but also Gershwin's own piano reduction of his music. Unfortunately the weakest parts in Grainger's transcription are those moments when he deviates from Gershwin's score but fortunately for the majority of the time he is faithful to the original. For this Grainger rightly deserves praise, as he does for his genuine and heartfelt appreciation of the serious nature of Gershwin's music, which is more than can be said for so many other Gershwin arrangements.
I'd like to have your piano arrangements. Even when I can't play them, I like to see the music while I listen to it. Are any of them in print? Are there plans to print them? For some reason, it's hard to find your CDs lately - glad I spent the money when I had the chance. (ps: Do you know who the arranger is who made the versions in the Warner song folio? They're based on Gershwin's piano-vocal score, but the chords are less of a handful. I saw an earlier printing that included the name, and it was somebody I recognized… and in the decades since then, it's gone completely from my head.)
Hi Jack, As you are probably one of the most knowledgeable Gershwin enthusiasts, I'd like to ask you something. (Sorry if this is out of scope here). How does this kind of compositions collide with the current copyright laws surrounding Gershwin? Is this transcription considered a separate composition? I have been surfing on the internet and I'm not quite sure whether these arrangements are "allowed", as they don't meet the current USA's Copyright Term Extension. Let's imagine that, for example, I'd like to write a piece inspired by some Gershwin melodies. Not simply copying extracts from the compositions, but more like what Rachmaninoff did with his Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini. Could I be currently allowed to this kind of "arrangements"? Thanks! (Let me also say that I admire you a lot ^_^ and thanks to you I discovered Gershwin!)
Praise of both composers is justified (of course). However, this is a Grainger "fantasy" setting; not completely dissimilar from his "rambles" for piano. This is why Grainger deviates from the original score at times. To arrange or rearrange a composers music is the highest form of praise. God only knows the amount of time, work, and dedication it would take to write (or even do an exact copy) of a 20 minute fantasy for 2 pianos.
I am further in and realize what I have just mentioned before are just a few of the many, MANY breathaking moments in this arrangement/re-composition. It may start out flashy and fast, but when it gets introspective and cloud-like is (in my opinion) when it gets the deepest and most worthwhile. This thing is a great work, and had Percy Grainger done nothing else, he would still be revered as a master (or should be).
It's good to revisit this after hearing the Lebeque sisters play this several times - Hamelin and Lane are to be commended for playing the notes as written, and not trying to "jazz it up" by distorting the rhythm in several places. If it's worth playing, it's worth playing right, and these gentlemen certainly play it right.
What makes it hard to wrap your head around is that there are two pianos playing opposing rhythms. Separately, they're not too difficult (just eights and triplets), but put them together and it sounds like a mess (a gorgeous, luscious, mess). If you can play a 2 against 3 you understand this rhythm...it's just a 2 against 3 with two people. This is one of those things that sounds harder than it is (thanks goodness).
I STILL don't understand how (for example) the bars from 02:49 to 3:04 even WORK rhythmically... there's no way I can possibly count that rhythm at this stage in my musical career (part of it goes by too fast, anyway). I'm I can kick back and hear two absolute masters playing this, so that I don't have to play it myself to hear it!
I got to turn pages for Frederick Hodges, who duetted with Richard Dowling on this at the West Coast Ragtime Festival several years ago. What a ridiculously complicated thing! BUT - it's great too, and makes a statement, so I guess that's what counts. All that complication isn't necessarily superfluous... Grainger was trying to make a statement. I only wish PORTER Grainger had arranged these, as well as Percy.
The part from 4:31 to 4:46 is breathtaking... to me it sounds like something out of fantasy, not just due to the harmony moving in whole steps (creating an effective out-of-this-world sound) but also due to the completely wild (for Western music) layering of the already loopy (for western music) quarter-note-triplet melody over an accompaniment that is now playing QUINTUPLETS(!!!). How the HELL do you count that??? One of these guys must be Bulgarian or something... they know fives inside-out.
Certainly a barnstorming performance. Do listen also to Martin Jones and Richard McMahon on a pianissimo [that's the name of the label] CD if you can find it. They also play Grainger's A Lincolnshire Posy and Arthur Benjamin's Jamaican Pastiches (including the famous Jamaican Rumba, which in fact Benjamin himself dreamed up!). The two lads (the recording was made in the early 80s) really let their hair down and the result is unalloyed pleasure.
Piers Lane is every bit the equal technically of Hamelin. They are both superb musicians. Piers Lane has merely an enormous repertoire whereas Hamelin plays everything. I wouldn't hazard a guess at who is playing which piano part, Hamelin & Lane are both so in tune with each other. Besides in most works for two piano these days, the numbers in "piano 1" and "piano 2" are numerals not ordinals. MUCH MORE IMPORTANT - this arrangement by the genius Percy Grainger is wonderful.
Maybe it is restricted for you if you are in a school email or chrome book. You should try to sign out of RU-vid and listen to it. Or you should sign in with a gmail, hotmail, or etc.
Great performance of course, however I prefer the interpretation of the Labèque sisters... also available on youtube, for some reason much less viewed and commented.
I am 10 yrs old I have been play for... A month now?? I know literally EVERYTHING about piano And.... I don't know how to play after 1 minute. Is this piece simplifiable?!
I think you should try inventing your own arrangement of some of the melodies heard in this piece. It would teach you a lot about composition, and allow you to flex creatively around the piano and get yourself familiar with the instrument
Piers Lane is every bit the equal technically of Hamelin. They are both superb musicians. Piers Lane has merely an enormous repertoire whereas Hamelin plays everything. I wouldn't hazard a guess at who is playing which piano part, Hamelin & Lane are both so in tune with each other. Besides in most works for two piano these days, the numbers in "piano 1" and "piano 2" are numerals not ordinals. MUCH MORE IMPORTANT - this arrangement by the genius Percy Grainger is wonderful.
