MAESTRO SARÀ LEI!

Friday 31 August time 9.00 pm

IMOLA Tozzoni Palace Courtyard

MAESTRO SARÀ LEI! ovvero… I tormenti del giovane Gershwin

Original text by Stefano Valanzuolo

STEFANO VALANZUOLO reciting  voice

FIORENZO PASCALUCCI piano

 

Maurice Ravel (1875 – 1937)

Pavane pour une infante défunte (1899)

Jeux d’eau (1901)

 

Arnold Schönberg (1874 – 1951)

Mässige Viertel, from Three Pieces op. 11 (1909)

 

Igor Stravinskij (1882 – 1971)

Piano-Rag-Music (1919)

 

Claude Debussy (1862 – 1918)

Golliwogg’s cake-walk from Children’s Corner L.113 (1907)

 

George Gershwin (1898 – 1937)

Andante con moto e poco rubato from Three Preludes (1926)

Rhapsody in Blue (arr for solo piano by G. Gershwin, 1927)

An American in Paris (transcription by F. Pascalucci from the transcription for solo piano by William Daly, 1929)

The man I love (1924) – I got rhythm (1930)

 

We do not know if Maurice Ravel, guest of honour of the party set up with glitz by Eva Gauthier, that night has blown out the candles on the cake. We know, however, that the party in New York for its 53 years was cheered by a young American composer and pianist, strictly in a black tie like all the other guests. He was George Gershwin and, for the occasion, he performed on the big Steinway of the house, passing from “Rhapsody in Blue” to “The man I love”. It was March 7, 1928, a date not to be underestimated for the history of music.

Gershwin would introduce Ravel to the pleasures of the Cotton Club and Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom, revealing a new universe and the rising talent of Duke Ellington. For himself, the brilliant American composer would have had nothing more than support, a consecration came from the classical world. He asked Ravel to give him composition lessons, but the Frenchman declined the proposal, believing that Gershwin did not need it. A few years later, even Schoenberg refused the same request, preferring to limit the meetings with his American colleague, who in the meantime became the richest composer in the world, to the tennis courts.

The comparison with the music and the musicians of the “cultivated” area remained, for Gershwin, a sort of obsession for all his lifetime. Unresolved, despite the success. And while Ravel was beginning to success at Carnegie Hall, the author of “Rhapsody” flew to Paris, in the traces of Debussy, Stravinsky or anyone who could make him feel adult, mature, accomplished. Of anyone who could give him the desired license of “Maestro”.

On the route New York – Paris, symbolically inaugurated by Lindbergh in those years, devepols the story of the show, suspended between anecdotes and masterpieces, between hopes and disappointments, between music and musics, between fame and money. Between Gershwin and Ravel. With the extraordinary – and not always friendly – participation of Debussy, Schönberg and Stravinsky.

 

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