Sony's lavish 2 CD tribute to Gershwin is also a personal and idiosyncratic tribute to Lucas Debarque. In a long and devoted essay, he stresses the seminal, ground breaking nature of Gershwin's music, of the blurring of 'classical' and 'popular' idioms that broke free from convention and spoke with a long absent American voice. Here was the spirit of the jazz age, the thin exuberant veneer that found a literary relative in Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby.' From the opening wailing clarinet slide of 'Rhapsodie in Blue' the stage was set for a voice that scorned inhibition and heralded the start of Gershwin's tumultuous if tragically brief career.
Perhaps above all Gershwin's genius lay in its naturalness and its avoidance of a traditional academic background. Initially, with a sense of limitation Gershwin left New York for Paris and sought guidance from Ravel and Nadia Boulanger. Together with Schoenberg later in America, they shared the same opinion. As Ravel put it, 'why become a second-rate Ravel when you are a first-rate Gershwin?' Briefly crest fallen Gershwin, with characteristic resilience, responded with his tone poem 'An American in Paris' and returned to New York declaring, 'true music must reflect the thought and inspirations of the people and time. My people are American. My Time is today.' Intellectual curiosity left him cold. Asked why he had so many rhythms scrapping together he replied, 'I feel things inside, and then I work them out. That's all.'
Lucas Debargue's album is special. Firstly, it is by his own admission 'a labour of love' and secondly, in the spirit of transformation it follows familiar Gershwin-the Preludes, 'Rhapsodie in Blue' and the F major Concerto-- with his own arrangements--you could say, 'paraphrases de concert--' of the songs, the most beloved core and centre of Gershwin's works. Brisk and ebullient in the 'Rhapsodie' and Concerto Debargue is partnered by Elim Chan and the 'Orchestre De Paris' with a true sense of occasion before moving on to the more personal side of his celebration. 'Embraceable You' kicks off with a rumba and 'I got rhythm' gives us in Debargue's words his 'craziest track.' 'Summertime' is the densest and most extended of all. Dedicated to the pianist Hayato Sumino it confirms how Gershwin's originals are encrusted with elaboration and ingenuity.
Finally, Debargue at the age of thirty-six has included a break from music in the field of literature and recorded albums of wide-ranging music by Scarlatti, the complete solo piano works of Faure, Szymanowski's notoriously demanding Second Sonata and Ravel's 'Gaspard de la Nuit.' His present Sony discs are of a dazzling enterprise reflecting a time and a place and of a composer who before his death at the age of thirty-eight died disillusioned, saying, 'I am famous, I am rich, and I am deeply unhappy.'
There are legendary recordings of 'Rhapsodie in Blue' by Earl Wild, whose performance in 1942 was partnered by Toscanini, also of the Concerto together with transcriptions of the Songs. These transcriptions have also been recorded by Martin Jones. Yet Lucas Debarbue's enterprise is of a sufficient verve and commitment to make comparisons irrelevant.
Bryce Morrison