Let me say at once that Janis Vakarelis's performance of the Concerto in F is refreshingly enjoyable and is given a first-class modern digital recording, as fine as any available, recorded in the admirable acoustics of the Henry Wood Hall and naturally balanced by Andrew Keener and Tony Faulkner, a highly reliable team. Without losing any of the jazz inflexions the performance of Concerto treats the work like a major romantic masterpiece, which it is. Loose-structured it may be, but spontaneously so, with the finale drawing on material from earlier movements in the best romantic tradition. And what tunes! They never pall for me. Vakarelis is an excellent soloist, lyrically responsive and rhythmically nimble, but Henry Lewis is a strong directing force and he has the measure of the inherent contrasts between melancholy blues and emotional ardour (witness the nostalgic flavour to the secondary theme of the first movement and its full-throated climax later) and between Gershwin's skittish scherzando effects (as in the Andante) and the boldly rhythmic Allegro agitato of the finale, which Vakarelis articulates forcefully, but without any heaviness. The famous trumpet solo in the slow movement is done in a nice, easy blues style and the RPO woodwind respond with creamily seductive timbre, the reprise is equally attractive. An American in Paris is also played with obvious enjoyment, but Lewis's touch is less sure here. It is a robust account in spite of its relaxed opening gait, with strong accents and the central blues tune taken in a flexibly fluent style rather than sensuously plangent, yet later the trumpet solo in the night club sequence is splendidly jazzy and the piece ends vigorously. But one wonders what the RPO directors were thinking of in issuing this pairing, when virtually all the competition offers the Rhapsody in Blue as well!
The example I have, an extremely well engineered CD from Arabesque which has an almost uncanny presence, was recorded at the EMI studios in Abbey Road and plays for 74 minutes. Mitch Miller, who directs this release, has been an outstanding and distinguished crossover musician on the American musical scene since he began his career as an oboe player touring America in 1934. He travelled with a 55-piece orchestra (conducted by Leo Reisman and Charles Previn—the uncle of Andre) and the composer played piano. But in spite of this formative experience, the performances here are hopelessly mannered and indulgent and though the sheer strength of the conductor's personality holds the music-making together, they cannot be recommended. The climax of the blues tune in An American in Paris is heavily broadened, punctuated by rhythmic drum thwacks. There is an excellent soloist in both the concertante works but again the lyrical sentience in the orchestra is impossibly eccentric and adds one-and-a-half minutes to the first movement of the Concerto compared with Previn's EMI version, while the Rhapsody in Blue is nearly two-and-a-half minutes longer than Bernstein's famous CBS account notable for its spaciousness.
As for the competition, DJF and I seem agreed that the re-mastered Previn/EMI release (see LP and CD reviews July and September 1986) is preferable to his later Philips version. Both contain some abbreviations of the text in the Rhapsody but this is not a vital point: in any case if it's the Rhapsody in Blue you're after the Bernstein version (CD—7/87) is unsurpassed and, I suspect unsurpassable. There is now a most enjoyable Philips Silverline CD and tape of the famous triptych, with Werner Haas a splendid soloist and the Monte Carlo Opera Orchestra surprisingly and involvingly glamorous in An American in Paris and second to none in the Concerto, while at bargain price Classics for Pleasure have just issued the Blumenthal/ECO/Bedford versions on CD, which were rightly highly regarded when they first appeared on LP. I like too the jazzy exuberance of Earl Wild and the Boston Pops under Fiedler on RCA. The permutations are almost endless, but certainly with only two works offered the RPO/ ASV issue, for all its merits seems short measure.'