Catfish Row, Gershwin's own suite from Porgy and Bess, is the news here. First performend in 1936, this was forgotten in the wake of the composer's death the following year, rediscovered in 1958 and re-titled by his brother, Ira, after the opera's locale to distinguish it from the by then widely performed and recorded Symphonic Picture of Porgy and Bess by Robert Russell Bennett. This latter, commissioned by Fritz Reiner and first heard in 1943, was probably the main reason for Gershwin's suite being passed over, for it has a brash and immediate effectiveness. But Catfish Row is far more sensitive, in line with the spirit of the original, and offers an interesting, partly unexpected, selection of the music.
The BPO is not the first orchestra that one thinks of in connection with Gershwin, nor is Ozawa a conductor to whom I warm readily. Yet this interpretation easily surpasses the only previous locally available version, by the St Louis orchestra under Leonard Slatkin (Turnabout TV37081S, 7/75—nla). True, the BPO's violin soloist is too distant in ''Summertime'', and this is a curious fault in a recording otherwise so vivid and sharply focused; also Weissenberg is rather stiff in the ''Jazzbo Brown'' sequence. But otherwise an excellent appreciation is shown of the composer's idiom.
Of less interest are the Rhapsody and Variations. Weissenberg shows more restraint in the solo parts than I had expected, yet sounds uncommitted. And, as ever, sections of the Rhapsody seem elephantine when played by a full symphony orchestra. But Catfish Row makes this LP indispensable to admirers of Gershwin.'